10-Watt Laser Engraver

I bought the engraver quite a while ago, not for myself, but it ended up staying at my place for a while, so it would have been wrong not to write about it :)

I’ll skip the backstory and get straight to the review, starting with the unboxing.

Don’t worry, the package didn’t come by DHL; at their rates, it would probably have cost a fortune. It was delivered by Nova Poshta.
The box is noticeably large and quite heavy.


The manufacturer (or whoever packed it) should probably give the box a little more thought, since the engraver and the box are somewhat mismatched in size, and the package could easily be made about one and a half times smaller.
There was a ton of packing material inside, right down to Chinese newspapers. The packer did a great job; no complaints there.


Specifications:
Continuous power - 6 W
Peak power - 10 W
Working area - 140x200 mm
Engraver dimensions - 320x295x195 mm.


The package isn’t exactly huge, but you certainly can’t call it small either.
1. Engraver frame
2. Laser module with gantry crossbeam
3. Lifting mechanism
4. Power supply
5. Safety glasses
6. USB flash drive with software
7. Two adapters for European outlets
8. USB-to-RS232 TTL converter
9. Three spacers
10. Metal test pieces

Items 1 and 2 aren’t in this photo; I’ll show them a little later.


As expected, the package includes safety glasses with adjustable arms, exactly like the ones from last time. And, just like last time, I had to extend the arms all the way.
This time, the software came on a flash drive. It looks pretty good, but has a capacity of just 128 MB. That’s fine, really—the Chinese manufacturers are simply getting rid of old flash drives. On the other hand, it’s much more convenient than CDs, since not everyone has a drive to put one in anymore :)
The engraver connects to a computer via a USB-RS232 TTL converter. The engraver end has a standard flat connector, which is very inconvenient for two reasons: it can be plugged in the wrong way, and it doesn’t fit very securely.


Last time, the package included small pieces of wood and cardboard to test the engraver. This time, they included metal plates.


I mentioned spacers in the list of included items. The thing is, this laser has a fixed focus. Last time, you had to adjust it in place; this time, it’s the other way around: you adjust the distance between the workpiece and the laser. The spacer is 18 mm long, and the laser is focused for exactly that distance. Place it between the workpiece and the laser emitter, then adjust the distance until the spacer fits snugly.
One of the test plates already has a sample engraving from the manufacturer, so I’ll try to make something similar.

The power supply has a plug with flat pins, but they included two adapters :) The black one came from the engraver manufacturer, the white one from the store. I can tell you right away that you can throw the black one away, since it simply won’t fit a standard outlet.
The power supply has an output voltage of 12 V and a maximum current of 4 A.


As I mentioned above, you adjust this engraver by moving the workpiece closer to or farther from the laser. That’s what this lifting mechanism is for.


The adjustment range is more than adequate for this engraver, but there are a few drawbacks. With my old engraver, I could simply put the workpiece on a table, or even place the engraver anywhere on the workpiece. Here, the workpiece has to sit on a platform about 10x10 cm in size, which isn’t very convenient. I should also mention that the adjustment screw is quite stiff, though the mechanism may loosen up with use.


As a precaution and to satisfy my curiosity, I opened up the power supply. To do that, though, I had to use a hammer and some old knife.
Inside, we can see that the board and the case were clearly not originally designed for each other.


This power supply clearly came from some piece of equipment, but it looks pretty good—very good, in fact.


The input has a proper mains filter and even a varistor, which is extremely rare.
The only thing is, the 220 V wires are soldered to the wrong pads, just to the underside of the board, and they didn't even bother removing the stubs of the old wires.


This power supply clearly came from some branded device. It has a quality 47 µF input capacitor, though that's barely enough for the claimed 48 W.
I couldn't identify the high-voltage transistor's marking, even after trying to clean it.
The output capacitors are branded too, and there are a couple of clipped wires next to them.
I'll venture a guess that, judging by the markings, this power supply originally had an output current of 2 A.


Interestingly, two LEDs are soldered to the board. The one on the right appears to be original, while the one on the left was added later.


There's nothing special on the underside of the board: it's a typical board from a decent power supply, with a small six-pin PWM controller and a handful of components.


That's it for the kit overview. Now let's move on to the engraver.
Last time I assembled everything from a kit of parts. This time, however, the kit comes almost fully assembled and consists of just two pieces: the frame and the gantry crossbeam.
In other words, the design is identical to the previous one; it's just been preassembled for convenience.
It looks good: black acrylic and black anodized aluminum extrusion. That doesn't affect functionality, of course, but I have no complaints about the appearance so far.


It uses three stepper motors with a somewhat unusual design. I'll show their markings later.
Two motors move the gantry's vertical supports, while the third moves the laser module assembly itself.


The drive is belt-driven, as before, but this time it uses different rollers.


All the belts have a reasonably convenient tension adjustment mechanism. I should also note that everything was already adjusted out of the box.
But as for the connectors—or rather, the way they connect to the sockets—I would give the manufacturer a slap on the wrist. How could they do this? Where's a proper plug?


The wires from both motors eventually come together at a single eight-pin connector that plugs into the control board.


The control board is mounted on one of the frame's short sides. In my setup, it will be at the back, but you can turn the engraver around so the board faces forward, if you like—though that doesn't look very neat.


They didn't put much thought into mounting the board to the frame; it's simply stuck to the acrylic base with double-sided tape. I'm not trying to nitpick, but in my opinion, a device at this fairly high price could have been put together more neatly.


1. The motor drivers use the well-known 4988ET chip — datasheet
2. Instead of the Arduino familiar to many, the controller is a fairly uncommon STC15W404AS microcontroller. I found the datasheet in Chinese.


I've finally reached the key component. It's the key component because it determines the cost of the entire kit: the frame, motors, power supply, and so on make up only a small part of the total price. The laser module is the most expensive part of the whole product.
This is also preassembled as a single unit: the laser emitter itself, the movement mechanism, and the aluminum extrusion everything is mounted on.


The store listing gives the power as 10 W, and the same figure appears in the title. But on the store page, you'll find the following information:
Laser power
Pulsed: 10 W
Average: 6 W
18 mm focal length

I found some indirect information online suggesting that it uses a NUBM44 laser module rated at 6 W, which is essentially what the stated specifications say.
Technically, there's not much to complain about: it can reach 10 W in pulses, but trying to run it at full power for extended periods could burn it out. It will still emit light, but it won't cut or engrave anymore.


A driver board is mounted on the laser emitter housing—or, more precisely, on its heatsink.


I've seen reviews of similar engravers, but those had a clearly simpler, smaller board. I can also say that the assembly is quite neat, and the input capacitor is a good-quality 1000 µF, 35 V part.


A fairly large fan sits on top to cool the heatsink. It also blows smoke away from the cutting area.


The fan is covered by a protective grille. I suspect it uses a ball bearing rather than a sleeve bearing.


1. Judging by its appearance, the fan is clearly used, and judging by the noise level, it probably came from some kind of server. Although, no, server fans seem quieter. There's no doubt it's a powerful fan, but it's so loud that you can forget about working at night—at least in a living space.
But it's clearly a name-brand fan, made by Sanyo Denki. Fans from this company usually come with Intel CPU heatsinks. I have no concerns about its reliability, even though it's used.
2. The stepper motors are marked 36H22HM. According to information online, the step angle is 0.9 degrees. Judging by the manufacturing date, I suspect these also came from some kind of equipment.


It's a small thing, of course, but rubber feet are glued to the bottom. I noticed them while dragging the engraver across the table. A tiny plus, but a plus :)


One of the main assembly steps is fitting the top of the gantry between the side supports and tightening four screws. The screws are, of course, included :)


Everything went fine for me, but just to be safe, make sure the belts are straight and don't drift toward the edges of the drive rollers.



Next, connect the wires to the control board. On the one hand, it's all very simple: there are wires with connectors, and the board has matching sockets for them.
Still, the whole setup looks rather depressing. Last time everything was much neater; here, the wires end up hanging... well, all over the place.


The flash drive included instructions for connecting and configuring it—download—with a photo showing how to connect everything. It all looks simple and clear: here are the connectors, and here are the wires, color-coded.


But in reality, the colors match on only two of the four connectors.
From left to right:
1. Power connector for the laser module and fan. It's very hard to plug it in the wrong way because the connector is keyed.
2. Gantry motor connector. I installed it by intuition, simply matching the orientation of the connector itself. The plug has one smooth side, while the other has holes for the contact latches.
3. Laser module drive connector, same as in point 2.
4. USB—or rather, RS232 TTL. I connected it as shown in the picture above; the wire colors match here.

The power supply connects to the fifth connector, but it's hard to get this wrong. I'll just mention that it's a standard input, with positive on the inside.

Surprisingly, not only did everything work right away, but all the motors also moved in the right directions.


This is what the assembled and connected setup looks like from the board side. It looks rough and unattractive, of course.


That's why I turned the engraver around to face the other way. Besides, in this orientation the axes move as intended.
Basically, this is its working position, and the stand is also installed as intended. That brings out a second drawback: you have to adjust the height first, and only then position the stand, otherwise it's not always convenient.


When I tried to set the height, I discovered an assembly mistake. Not one I made—the manufacturer did. The laser module can be mounted in two positions, higher or lower. This works because the module has six mounting holes, while the mechanism has only four.
If you install the module in the upper position, it won't work: the movement mechanism itself gets in the way—or, more precisely, you won't be able to set the distance between the workpiece and the laser to 18 mm.
Guess how the module was installed originally? That's right, the wrong way around. And what's more, it's also shown installed incorrectly in the store photo...
Anyway, a screwdriver and a minute later, everything is where it should be.


A little about the software. Just in case, I uploaded everything that was on the flash drive to Yandex Disk.
The package includes a driver and a rather interesting program for working with the engraver.

On the plus side, I didn't have to configure anything at all. The driver has been installed on my computer for a long time, since it's also used with other devices, and the software is simply “turn it on and get to work.” You don't even need to install it—just run it. I didn't even have to select a port number; in fact, the software doesn't even have that setting!


The program is quite convenient in its own way. It lets you resize the image, rotate it by any angle, flip it vertically or horizontally, and adjust the laser power, pulse duration, and operating speed. The last three settings can be changed “online,” that is, while the machine is running.
When you're done, you can choose to cut around the perimeter of the finished design.
You can also choose a printing strategy. The “Shortest path” mode is especially useful, as it greatly speeds up “printing” simple designs in raster mode.


But there are some drawbacks, too.
1. Some settings aren't clear. For example, the 0–255 slider and the mode with the “seesaw” control to the right of the laser power adjustment.
2. The speed adjustment is very gradual, so it's not particularly useful: the difference between minimum and maximum is only about twofold.
3. The software crashes. No, it works perfectly and reliably while “printing,” but if you try to open a new image, about 7 times out of 10 it ends with the program freezing completely. And if you run the software without administrator privileges, the odds go up to 9.9 out of 10. I haven't solved the problem yet, even after moving the program folder between different drives.


The package also included two more programs for preparing images. One is Inkscape, which I think is familiar to anyone who uses engravers. The other, XnSketch, was new to me.
It's also a fairly convenient and simple program for preparing images. It lets you apply various effects, but since the engraver is “black and white,” most of them won't be useful. And, like the control program, it doesn't need to be installed.


While experimenting, I ran a simulation without the laser to measure the “printing” time. With the settings shown in the screenshot, engraving a 33 x 50 mm image (about the size of a matchbox) would take almost an hour. But this is raster mode, so the laser prints one line at a time—in this case, with a 0.1 mm step. Increasing the resolution will reduce the engraving speed proportionally, so there's no point chasing high resolution unless you really need it.


Now we can have a little fun with the laser :)
But first, a warning!
WARNING: This device contains a high-power laser emitter.
It is extremely dangerous to be nearby (even in the same room) while the device is operating without protective glasses.
Remember, you can look at a laser only twice in your life.
And that's no joke or overcautious warning: a laser this powerful really is extremely dangerous.


First, a test in vector mode. I've explained this before: in this mode, the image is drawn as lines, much like drawing with a pencil. The laser turns on at the start of a line and off at the end.

The design is 56 mm in diameter, and the workpiece is pine.


You can see that a knot ended up in the design area, where the cut didn't go through. The power was about 75% (I don't remember exactly).
If the engraving looks flat, let me explain: the burn depth is about 1–1.5 mm.


Here I decided to try raster engraving. In this mode, the image is drawn line by line, like on a printer, with the brightness changing as the laser moves. When the laser needs to be off, the engraver increases its travel speed, which speeds up the process a little.


The image wasn't a great choice, since halftones clearly aren't suited to a laser engraver. Still, with a little practice, you can improve the quality.
To speed things up, I engraved with a 0.15 mm step—the largest available—so the result was rather rough, with noticeable banding. But I should say that the photo doesn't show the whole picture: the result isn't a halftone image, but a 3D image, where darker areas are cut deeper.


Raster mode is the slowest. Engraving this image took 23 minutes, even with the speed set to maximum and the resolution set to its lowest.


This is what it looked like in real life. Sorry about the poor video quality; I had to put glasses on the camera too, because I was worried about its sensor.
The first part is vector mode.
The second part is raster mode, but since the process takes a long time, I had to cut out some of the footage.


Above, I mentioned that raster mode has three operating options. Here's what they mean.
1. Shortest path: each line is drawn one at a time, so the laser moves left and right within a single line, gradually moving downward, then moves on to the next line.
The advantage is higher speed; the downside is that the material overheats, and the laser has to work harder.
2. Left/right: engraving takes place as the laser moves in both directions. Moving right, it engraves odd-numbered lines (1, 3, 5); moving left, it engraves even-numbered lines (2, 4, 6).
It's slower, but more precise.
3. Left to right. In this mode, the laser is on only while the mechanism moves from left to right; it switches off on the return trip.
The gentlest operating mode, with minimal overheating of the workpiece.
I chose a slightly unsuitable image for engraving. The difference would have been clearer with wider lines.


Above, I showed how it works in vector mode, but didn't mention the speed. The software is set to 20 mm/s by default, but lets you increase it to 50 mm/s. I tried making several passes over the same image at maximum speed, but overlooked two things.
1. The laser power needs to be increased in proportion to the speed.
2. Since the table and the engraver are sitting separately on the desk, the engraver shifts at this speed. It's very light, and the movement at high speeds nudges it during operation. So it's a good idea to add some weight or secure it somehow.


The first pass used the same settings as before, but with lower power and a cut depth of about 1 mm. The cut itself came out neater, though.
Once again, it's hard to show all this in a photo :(


Engraving speed is adjusted here using the parameter marked with a knife icon.


A smaller version of what it was supposed to look like.


And of course, a test of what the manufacturer tries to show in its ads: engraving on metal.
I was a little surprised, but it really is possible.
1 - maximum speed, bold font
2 - medium speed
3 - medium speed, two passes
4 - minimum speed
5 - minimum speed, two passes
All tests were done at 100% laser power: 1-4 with a 20 ms pulse, 5-6 with a 15 ms pulse.


Then I tried some more, using roughly the same settings. The only thing I changed was the speed.
1 - engraving directly onto the protective film. I made a mistake at first (the top inscription). More precisely, I chose one font size, then enlarged the image. If you need to print with a larger font, choose the desired size from the start, since scaling degrades the image.
Below, I removed the image scaling.
2. You can see that the text came out noticeably better without scaling.
3, 4 - these are versions without the film, first on the top (polished) side, then on the bottom (matte) side.


Besides experimenting with engraving, I also tried cutting plastic. The photo shows the results at 80% power and three passes. At these settings, it cuts all the way through 2 mm-thick plastic. Though the smell...


This was done in raster mode, at high speed and using the "shortest path" option.
Since increasing the image size also increases the line width, the larger piece ended up with wider cuts, and the plastic melted noticeably more.


Power was set to 80%.


An experiment engraving particleboard. Three passes at 75-80% power produce a cut depth of about 3.5 mm.
The last one was more for fun. I decided to try engraving the diode bridge casing. Now it's a PWM controller :)


The power was set to 30% in the last mode, but even that is too much; half as much would really be enough.
Interestingly, I had the "shortest path" mode enabled, but it engraved the numbers first, then the letters on the right, and then the ones on the left.


And here's a video of the whole process.
1. Demonstration of the three engraving modes in raster mode.
2. Vector mode, first at 20 mm/sec, then at 50 mm/sec.
3. Engraving on metal.
4. Cutting plastic. There were three passes; I removed the middle one from the video.

At the end, you can see the fan blowing the parts away. I wanted to try engraving one of the plates they included, but it was so light that it kept getting blown away, so I decided to set it aside altogether.


Now for the summary—or, more accurately, my personal impressions and a comparison with my 2.5 W engraver.
1. The engraver reviewed here really is more powerful.
2. It can work at a fairly high speed, definitely faster than mine.
3. Although it's rated at 10 W, that's peak power. You often see people online saying they simply broke theirs through improper use. In vector mode, it's best not to set the power above 70–80%. In raster mode, a lot depends on the cutting settings. I'd recommend using higher power and cutting in a single pass rather than two.
4. Noise. No, not noise—NOISE. I spent about two hours engraving and experimenting, and when I finally turned the engraver off, my ears were still ringing for another half hour or so.
5. Software. On the one hand, everything looks nice: just switch it on and get to work; there's hardly anything to configure. The software itself is quite capable, too. But guys, the bugs... Sometimes you try to open a file and it freezes, five to seven times in a row. But I can say that it works perfectly during engraving; the problem is specifically with opening files.
6. Design. Of course, it would have been nice to get something better for the money, for example, proper ball-bearing linear guides, but that's not what we got. On the plus side, it's basically all assembled already, so there's very little to do.

That's about it for now. I'll be glad to answer questions and hear your comments and suggestions.

At my request, the store provided a coupon. With ASDIY, the price is 425.99.