Laser cutting machines and engraving machines are not our usual strengths. However, recently we have obtained some around the office due to various reasons. We have been quite immersed in this field and are very interested in this field. After seeing some good reviews, we thought we would share our impressions of the latest Beamo, and we found it particularly exciting.

This is Flux's latest project-the company was first known for its Delta personal 3D printer for less than $1,000. On paper, Beamo is a very powerful 30W CO2 laser cutting machine and engraving machine, with an impressive 1,000 DPI resolution, relatively portable form factor, and the price is less than $1,000. Well, if you manage to catch one of the early morning specials, at least.

After spending some time on Beamo and thoroughly testing it, we can safely say that we are impressed. Relatively speaking, this economical package contains a lot of value-added services. Having said that, Beamo can make some touches on the experience in certain areas.

Despite all the playful and child-friendly images in the PR materials, Beamo is not a toy and should never be considered a toy. Beamo is user-friendly, but there can be no room for carelessness. Any laser that can cut actual materials cannot be taken lightly. There are safety precautions and rules to follow. Consider wearing protective glasses and ventilation.

Things are a bit more complicated than simple-"Don't stare at the glare". This is the main point that Flux takes home very thoroughly in its description.

If the 30W on the spec sheet is not enough to keep you alert, Beamo's thick metal casing and industrial audio fan should convince almost everyone that this is not a toy. It is built like a tank, and its 615 mm x 445 mm x 165 mm body is made of curved thick metal. It has a confident industrial look and feel, but it doesn't look bad.

The work area is covered by a large curved acrylic sheet that provides ample visibility (not really what you should be staring at) and easy access to the interior. There is a huge honeycomb grille inside, which can support whatever you are doing, while also providing enough distance from the bottom of the device to make the laser beam defocused enough so that it will not damage the bottom plate. Our best guess as to why Flux uses a thin honeycomb pattern is that it is geometrically unlikely to interfere with the most common sculpted shapes. In any case, it is really strong.

Beamo allows you to remove the bottom together with the grate and place the device in a larger work area so that you can sculpt larger objects in multiple runs. This sounds great, but we didn't really test it, because we didn't really have a huge surface suitable for carving around the office, and we didn't have the necessary ventilation to accommodate such operations indoors.

In addition, Flux may not even include the above functions in the United States, because it may cause some potential health problems for classroom use. Either way, the default work area of ​​300mm x 200mm is sufficient for our (and possibly most others) needs. Our main complaint is that the allowed height of 45 mm is really not enough for some of the things we want to engrave.

Continue to use Beamo's cooling and ventilation system. All the actual internal structure of the machine, especially the large CO2 tube, is cooled by the internal water circulation, which makes our inner geeks itchy in the right way.

Beamo is very loud, really, really loud, mainly because it has a huge fan on the back. That is exhaust, you should exhaust it somewhere outside the room. Flux even provides you with a flexible plastic tube, bracket and tools to fix them to the back of Beamo. Never skip this part, otherwise you will cause breathing danger in the room, and the situation will be worse if you use things like carbon fiber. Look, we have done our homework!

That fan is doing double duty. On the one hand, it generates a lot of airflow and positive air pressure when the machine is working to remove any dust, particles and smoke. On the other hand, some air will also enter the nozzle near the business end of the CO2 laser, which helps to prevent fire.

In fact, because the laser effectively burns the material away, it is more like a fire prevention procedure because a fire is expected. However, it is not a real open flame. The manual has some very interesting but discordant passages on the subject. Put a wet towel nearby and don't really leave the room, this is the point of the matter.

You will get a very satisfying and reassuring power button. You can use it at any time to quickly block Beamo. Lifting the acrylic cover also cuts off the laser at the hardware level. We appreciate this very much because the abort button and remote software on the integrated touch screen sometimes get stuck.

On the back of Beamo, we found the powerful fan we already mentioned, as well as a standard power socket, two USB ports, one of which is for the bundled Wi-Fi adapter, and an RG-45 port for Ethernet. So you can connect to the device in the way that suits you best.

Therefore, impressive hardware and aggressive pricing-please also check. But what can you actually do with Beamo? Well, a lot, actually. Compared with professional solutions, most of them are very easy.

However, when we first learned about Beamo, we might just slightly exaggerate Beamo in our original article. However, to be fair, some of Flux's advertisements are quite unclear in this regard.

To make a long story short, Beamo is first and foremost an engraver and rarely can act as a real cutter. In the default settings, the 30W CO2 laser performs well in engraving objects, with impressive accuracy and resolution. In fact, cutting them rarely has very good results. Even things like wood and cardboard are unpredictable when really trying to cut in completely.

In addition, even in terms of engraving, our metal is not a friend of Beamo. You can easily remove the coating from brushed aluminum and the like, but carving out exposed metal is not acceptable.

Just in terms of its nature, CO2 lasers are more suitable for certain tasks, but not quite suitable for others. Flux recognizes this and promises to provide Beamo with an optional additional accessory, which basically binds the semiconductor laser to the machine. That person should have everything needed to work on metal.

Since we have already discussed the subject, Beamo’s other optional add-ons (should be available at some point) include a different bottom that allows you to handle rotating objects. This is used to carve things like cups and increase the maximum height of the carve object to 105 mm. This is something we really want to try at some point. The other additional Flux mentioned is an additional component that can auto-focus the laser. Very beautiful, because the current settings are prone to errors.

What better time is there to explain how the focus on Beamo works in its current state. Taking a step back and briefly explaining how the CO2 laser is actually directed to its target, it may be useful.

The actual CO2 pipe is hidden on the top of the device. From there, the laser beam is emitted into a set of two mirrors, which are moved to the set X and Y coordinates. One is mounted on the side, while the other is part of the nozzle assembly that floats around the work area. The last part of the optical puzzle is that you use a fairly rudimentary but still effective system to focus on the Z axis.

First, you bend a piece of acrylic resin downward from the air chamber on the nozzle. Then loosen the metal ring around the nozzle so you can slide the entire assembly up and down. Therefore, you can use acrylic sheets as anchor points. Then tighten things up, bend the acrylic, and you're done.

Obviously things that can be automated, just like Flux is obviously made with add-ons. However, this will increase costs. However, if this can achieve variable depth engraving, it may be worth it, which does not seem to be the same thing now. Now you can only use some shadows, and we have a mixed result.

As for guiding the laser on the X and Y paths-this is Beamo's job, and it does a good job of moving the laser beam at speeds of up to 300 mm/sec. This is one of the advantages of carbon dioxide lasers over semiconductor lasers-speed. That being said, you do need to be much slower to achieve results with certain materials. The actual positioning is done by a camera installed next to the laser nozzle.

It will generate a (sometimes imperfectly stitched) image grid and show you what you are currently in the machine. Then you can simply drag and drop, resize, group, layer, and many other content of the cuts and woods you want to make. It is very user-friendly and allows you to start making decent things right away.

However, as we have already mentioned, the system is not perfect. In addition to poor image stitching, there are also problems in finding the boundaries of the actual working area. Flux can definitely do better, marking these physics in Beamo. The top part of the honeycomb grate seems unreachable, as well as some far corners. We found that placing the object closer to the center of the inner region works best for us.

Before we get into the software and workflow aspects, where we have some of the most serious complaints about Beamo, we feel that we should show you some of our creations and experiments first, so that you can really understand what to expect.

Wood is a good starting point because it is a material that the machine can use well. That being said, you do need to be extra careful to fine-tune the power and speed parameters for each specific wood type, composition, and thickness. This is even more important if you want to make full-depth cutting. These may be hit or missed, and you definitely want to set Beamo to more power and one or two extra passes instead of being conservative about it.

Sculpting, on the other hand, is better for a lighter touch, otherwise you will end up with more black burn paths. The advantage here is that you can use layers to make some paths deeper and others softer as needed. In addition, using a paper cloth dipped in vinegar is very effective in cleaning wood burning residues.

As we mentioned before, the Beam studio software comes with a set of convenient presets for cutting and engraving different materials. The latter has two variants for certain materials-monochromatic and shaded. It looks very simple in the software, you only need to import and use images of different colors, flip a switch, which makes the software no longer reinterpret everything as black lines, and you can start.

When Beamo reaches the line that needs to be grayed out, it will dial back its power accordingly. According to our experience, it is actually difficult to obtain good results through coloring. Beamo obviously works as expected, but the input image we chose is not suitable. We found that you must carefully prepare the input image and choose a sufficiently sharp shadow.

Especially when you want to convert things like photos. Take your time, try and definitely follow one of the online tutorials to properly prepare the photos for engraving. This is very important. The big cutting board below has shadows in some areas, and frankly, this ended up destroying the end result rather than helping, because this was our first attempt.

Another material that supports shadows as a software preset is leather. Nevertheless, it is equally difficult for us to do this. The passport holder we sacrificed for this experiment first burned a solid logo in monochrome mode, and then two gradually increasing shaded versions of our two-color logo.

Obviously, we never got it right. Judging from the first engraving, leather is difficult to handle because it will definitely benefit from lighter toughness, or if you go too far, it will get worse. For a long time, due to its surface strength, softening on it has little effect. It is indeed a good balance.

The glass effect is surprisingly good. In the final engraving you will get this beautiful dot pattern effect, which can really show the amazing resolution of Beamo. Adjusting the preset power parameters of the glass has a very direct and practical effect on the engraving depth. On the mirror carved from the back, the result looks better and more professional.

However, after wood, our biggest success story may be rubber. Beam studio also has a preset. Although it does not support shadows, its simple monochrome output works very well on the phone cases we have tried. Once again, you can really see the amazing fine resolution that Beamo can achieve.

In addition, the spacious work area has enough space to pull things down like overlapping patterns and cover the entire case from top to bottom. It can be said that Beamo's design means that we don't have to worry too much about crossing the boundaries. We think the results speak for themselves.

However, as we said before, Beamo certainly has its limitations. In addition to the rather frustrating height limit, some materials simply cannot withstand the power of a CO2 laser. As expected, the metal proved to be particularly tough. The vanilla Beamo laser can hardly scratch stainless steel.

However, there is a layer of coated anodized metal on the top, just like the back panel of the old Motorola RAZR V3 in our office, which works well. Therefore, a mixed bag. We also tried to carve plates (probably not ceramic) bought from the dollar store. The laser did remove a few layers, but due to the color of the surface, the effect was not impressive.

We even tried a carbon fiber frame for a small racing drone, which has the same problem as the sheet metal. The layer did fall off, but the nature of the material made the grooves difficult to find. We would never recommend carbon fiber for another reason-it scares us on several levels.

First of all, people worry that tiny glass fibers will stick to the skin, or worse, will be inhaled. In addition, this may be the only material that can generate sparks during Beamo's research. It may be that the glass was incinerated. It's beautiful, but it's also scary.

We made a small video of Beamo using different materials. Since engraving is usually a very slow process, it has accelerated in most market segments. Beamo is enough to allow you to accurately calculate how long each project will take. The number varies greatly with the size of the laser, the complexity of the work and materials, presets, power, and speed. Our task is only one minute, and the cutting board takes more than 45 minutes to complete. It's easy to understand because we basically filled the entire working area of ​​Beamo.

Software is definitely the success or failure aspect of a product like Beamo. It basically aims to provide professional or near-professional features for a wider user base, so things need to be simple and straightforward. The two Flux have been basically completed.

The only problem we encountered was the initial setup-our recommendation is to only get the Beam Studio app instead of the Flux app, because the former is valid and the latter is invalid, despite the description on the Flux website.

Unfortunately, Flux uses its software to solve problems in polishing. To be fair, this may be partly attributable to the early nature of the product, hoping to fix some of the more annoying issues, such as unstable connections and misbehaving camera previews. However, in the current state, there are some noteworthy problems.

Currently, Beamo's basic workflow allows you to select, capture or draw suitable templates, patterns or images and import them into Beam Studio. However, as we mentioned, some extra steps need to be taken to prepare some images for engraving, especially color photos. In most cases, Beam Studio will not handle that part of the process.

Of course, you can decide to compose the picture entirely within Beam Studio, as long as you keep it simple and stick to the three basic geometric shapes, rotation, rounded corners, and text with selected fonts.

Basic editing and creation options in Beam Studio

To our credit, Beam Studio does provide a surprisingly powerful layering system, just like you can find in excellent image editing software. It is very suitable for choosing different speed and power parameters for different cuts and patches in the final creation. By the way, those along with the execution counter are located in the lower right corner of the UI as a slider.

Parameter preset • Shading • Camera preview

The above is the preset menu. In our tests, most of the default items in the list worked well. Once you start trying it yourself, you can add more custom ones to the list, which we find very useful.

After preparing the image and layering it correctly and adjusting the parameters and presets for each layer, all you need to do is participate in the camera preview, select the patch of the work area you want to preview, and maybe try a few times because of photo capture and stitching Is not completely reliable.

Then you arrange things, press export and let Beamo do its thing. You can use Beam Studio to monitor the progress of your tasks, as long as the connection is not dropped, this happens from time to time. You can even choose to use the on-board camera for real-time feed when you are working in Beamo. Unfortunately, its positioning method allows you to always see a position lower than the actual laser hit point, so it is a bit useless.

Since Beamo is not advisable to work without goggles, let's face it, you will want to see, we believe that setting up a separate streaming media camera solution is the best way.

According to Beamo's press materials, there are many ways to engrave without Beam Studio. Well, tidy up, because the Trace option on the built-in touch screen UI is currently not implemented. Just like the browse option, it probably gives you quick access to an online repository of templates, patterns, and images used for engraving. Something that beginners will definitely like. Hope to update soon.

However, what you can do at the moment is to export your Flux task from Beam Studio, then load it onto a USB drive and send it to Beamo in this way. Not ideal, but at least there is some flexibility.

What we chose to do during the test was to use a small laptop as a workstation next to Beamo to easily start tasks. For any more complex work in Beam Studio, we only need to use an ordinary PC workstation and the convenient .bvg scene saving format supported by Beam Studio to transfer the project from one PC to another. We can only imagine that this format will be incorporated into any future mobile app Flux built for Beamo.

At the time of writing, the company has only one Android app for Flux Delta. Judging from some news materials, the Beamo mobile app may also be in development.

This almost sums up the current state of Beamo's software and our overall feelings about it. The basic work is there, and it shows a lot of hope. It is available in its current state, but there are some setbacks-mainly that all the bio-comfort and user-friendly enhancements suggest or are in a certain state of preparation, but are not fully in place yet.

Frankly speaking, our reference frame for Flux Beamo is quite limited. Personally, it is a major upgrade to the small entry-level 2W red laser engraving machine that is often used in our office. Although more powerful than Beamo, it is definitely not a professional-grade device.

Nevertheless, through our personal research on the laser engraving machine niche market, it is still close, and it offers impressive packaging at a competitive price.

Therefore, Beamo does seem to have achieved a good middle ground. It is not too bulky, but large and flexible enough to accommodate the most common use cases. It is not overly powerful, but it is definitely not lacking. Fully functional, but not overly complicated. Indeed, our main complaint about Beamo is related to the lack of perfection in certain aspects of its software, and the nature of some of its advertising materials may be partially unclear.

If you do find that you are considering using Beamo or a laser engraving machine, we hope our observations will be helpful. This is another bit that might be useful-maintenance needs to be considered-another rather obscure piece of information.

Flux said that cleaning the lenses on Beamo should be a weekly task. There are track lubrication and water level monitoring in the cooling system. Performing all these operations correctly, Beamo should be able to use about 6 months to 1 year on the CO2 tubes of its factory. After that, you will have to add Flux to the part. The pricing and availability of these have not yet been confirmed.

What we get here again is that Beamo is not a toy, nor is it a truly desirable impulse purchase for the sake of possession. It is a specialized tool, made and delivered in a significantly more user-friendly way. Having said that, we feel that Beamo will be an important addition to any small shop or professional classroom.

Anyone will read it from the beginning to the bottom of the page, that's great.

These initial comments though. I hope they say the same about PC graphics cards.

Interesting article, I definitely want to see more non-smartphone technology reviews here.

Home News Comments Comparison Coverage Glossary Frequently Asked Questions RSS Feed Youtube Facebook Twitter Instagram

© 2000-2021 GSMArena.com Mobile version of the Android application Contact us Privacy Terms of Use Change Advertising Agree not to sell my data