I have plenty of 3D printers in my home shop, together with a CNC router and even two diode laser engraver. Though one piece of equipment that I wanted to have, is a CO2 laser cutter because it allows you to cut and mark a large variety of materials without a lot of setup and with only minimum mess. For this reason, I was really happy when the company FLUX reached out to me and offered one of their latest CO2 laser cutters for review.

The Beamo is the most compact laser cutter, that FLUX offers. The concept of the Beamo is that it’s compact but still capable. It comes shipped in a single box that can easily be handled. The box contains the machine itself that has everything you need to set it up on the inside, including a vent hose that guides the process fumes away from the machine.

The included user manual doesn’t only look nice from the outside but also guides you through the whole setup process, over software, materials, maintenance and troubleshooting. I was really looking for a nice peel of the big protective sheet on the front. Unfortunately, I was a bit disappointed that it stuck almost too well. Okay, jokes aside. Beamo uses only a reasonable 615 mm by 445 mm on your desk, feels nice and study with its sheet metal construction, comes with pre-aligned laser mirrors and includes everything you need to run it. For a CO2 laser, that’s not only the laser tube itself but also a watercooling system and an air pump for the air assist.  Air assist is basically compressed air, that comes out of the laser nozzle and cleans the cut you’re working on from smoke and debris for better cutting and engraving results.

Speaking of cooling, I had to add a couple of ml of distilled water into the reservoir because it was a bit low, so that I heard bubbles going through the system. The clear safety cover includes a switch that won’t let the laser turn on if it’s open, so no safety goggles are required during operation. The usable working area is 300mm x 210mm, so the size of an A4 or letter size piece of paper so not too big. On the base of the working chamber is a honeycomb mesh on which you place your workpiece. It’s removable for cleaning and the bottom can even be removed if you, for example plan to buy the rotary addon, for working on round objects. They use a linear rail for the x-axis and sturdy  smooth rods for the y-axis, which is pretty nice. The only thing I don’t really like is the belt system where 3D printers have majored a lot over the last years and where FLUX should probably get a bit inspired. First, the belt is not entirely parallel, which is not a huge problem, but might lead to minor distortions in outer regions of the bed. Then there is the idler that’s out of plastic. It can be tightened, but that would require removing two side panels. It is not the best solution, and if I feel my belt, it might be good to tighten it just a little more. The laser needs to be focused on the object you’re working on. In order to do that, you swing down the focus arm, loosen the focus ring, slide everything up or down until the bar rests on your workpiece and tighten the focus ring again. Pretty simple and straight forward. At last there is a big fan in the back, that quickly removes the smoke from the process area and vents it through a 120mm exhaust.

Speaking of exhausting; I also received the Beam Air because my initial plan was to place the Beamo in my studio. German houses are quite well insulated, so exhausting outside is more challenging than you might think. The Beam Air is a 4 Stage air filter consisting out of a pre-filter, medium filter, a charcoal filter and a beefy H13 HEPA filter with the goal to get particles and odors out of the process air. That should allow you to use the laser without the need to vent to the outside. The design is clean and compact and it can be either operated manually or, in my case, if I connect it to Beamo, it will automatically turn on when the laser operates. The fumes are guided though a flexible hose that you connect between the laser cutter and the fume extractor. Unfortunately, I quickly moved my Beamo back to the basement to vent to the outside, because, for my application, the Beam Air is not right, but I’ll get to that in a bit.

Setup of the Beamo Laser Engraver is really simple using the nice color touchscreen. You either connect the machine via Ethernet or using the included WiFi adapter to your network. Beam Studio, the software used to create laser projects, is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. It’s also nice to see that the software is actively developed, with the most recent version only being a couple of days old. Beam Studio is very easy to use and includes plenty of presets for different materials. You got basic shapes for designing simple parts but also have the option to import external vector formats like SVG or DXF. You can arrange your projects on different layers to assign individual parameters and also set the order in which your design gets processed, because you, for example, want to first engrave and then cut out your part. Besides vector engraving and cutting, where the laser follows the line, also raster engraving can be performed. Raster engraving is used when you don’t only want the outline of a part, but if you want to remove a bigger area or if you want to etch a greyscale image on your workpiece. In that mode, the laser head travels in a narrow meandering pattern and the laser is modulated so that it quickly turns on and off to only mark the desired areas. By also modulating the laser power, you can even engrave grayscale images. This can be done with jpg images for example. Another great feature is the included camera that scans your working area so that you can precisely align and position your designs.

But how does the Beamo laser cutter actually perform? Having only experience with diode laser engravers in the past, I was really pleased with the results. Since I wanted to find out what I can process with the machine, I lasered out a good dozen of material cutting tests, which is a premade pattern that’s available in Beam Studio. Every rectangle corresponds to one laser power, actually percent laser power of the maximum 30W and cutting speed in mm/s. The softer 4mm poplar plywood that you find in any German hardware store cuts like butter, even at higher speeds and only one pass. I even was able to cut 8mm thick plywood using two passes. Balsawood, probably especially interesting for model airplane builders, cuts with no issues at 4mm really cleanly and even 10 mm worked mostly well. Though here we can see that it’s a good idea to find proper cutting parameters, because maximum energy can sometimes just lead to your workpiece catching fire instead of cutting it. I had had the impression that going faster is usually the better choice for nicer results and rather using two passes. Also a neat trick on the side. If you want to cut thicker material, set your focus that it’s slightly below the surface maybe even going to half the thickness because that will lead to a more even energy density over the cut. Where the 30W laser starts struggling a little is if you want to cut harder wood. 2.5mm and 4mm birch plywood still cut well at a bit lower speeds, but 6.5mm is just too much, even at multiple passes. Here you rather start burning the wood than cutting it. Cardboard, of course, no issues whatsoever! 4mm felt - not a problem. 6mm Depron foam board that I used in the past for my model airplanes, cut great even at higher speeds and reduced laser power. The cool thing about a CO2 laser cutter is that you can work on transparent materials. The wavelength of a CO2 laser is around 10600nm which is 20 times higher then blue diode lasers for example. Things that are transparent in the visible spectrum are often not transparent for light at this high wavelength, therefore the laser energy is getting absorbed in the material and so can be used for cutting and engraving. Unfortunately, the thinnest piece I had in my shop was 5mm acrylic that I was just able to process at the slowest speed. Maybe a second pass would have helped to free more rectangles. Thinner material should be no problem, though. Engraving is no problem.

Another notable thing is that as soon as you uploaded one job on the Beamo it’s saved in storage. Using the screen, you can select old jobs and even adjust laser power and speed. Great if you need to do things over and over! Last, there is glass, also a material that doesn’t work with the common blue diode lasers. The Beamo is not able to cut it, and probably also more powerful lasers are not the right tool to cut glass, though what works great is engraving your own pattern with it. The laser creates microcracks at the location where it’s at and can therefore texture it. Great for displays and if you have the rotary attachment, also for individualizing glassware. If you’d like to see the cutting performance on other materials, let me know in the comments.

Material tests

Please note the Speed (S) and Power (P) modifiers marked on the boards.

Wood engraving worked flawlessly and line engravings came out really nice and clean with no overshooting marks that I feared due to the belt system.

Let’s now quickly talk about the Air Purifier, the Beam Air. In the beginning, I had it hooked to my machine, but since I have it in a pretty small room, there was still quite a noticeable smell I wasn’t comfortable working next to. I’m not 100% sure if that’s normal or if I’m just picky, but if you use a laser engraver in a confined area, I’d rather vent outside than using one of these filters. Though, if you have a bigger shop it’s still probably a reasonable piece of equipment to filter nasty particles and odors out of the air. Just never use one of these without any filter or external exhaust. I ended up clearing a bit of workspace and put the Beamo on a table next to a window, out of which I’m able to vent.

So what’s my verdict, and is the Beamo worth it’s $1500 to $2000 price tag, especially if you can find other CO2 lasers at a quarter of the price. First, the Beamo laser cutter / engraves was, since quite a while, a machine that just worked flawlessly out of the box. Easy setup, user-friendly software with presets, and what I enjoyed the most, integrated test patterns. The software and hardware eco-system just works and is worth so much if you need it for production. Cutting and engraving, even though not capable of working on really thick and dense materials, worked better than I expected and I can see plenty of uses for decorative applications or model building. Here I have to highlight Boxes.py, a python library, to automatically generate a ton of different box patterns for laser cutting and even usable in your browser. The thing that might be a downside for some is the small working area of only 210x300mm, but here you would have the option to upgrade to the more expensive FLUX Beambox or Beambox Pro. The availability of upgrades for metal engraving or rotary engraving are great. They even sell an autofocus module that, well, as its name suggests, sets the laser focus automatically but also lets you move the focus position downwards during cutting passes for deeper cutting. So $1500 to $2000 is a steep price tag, but what you’re getting seems to be a reliable tool with dedicated, well-working software and resellers all over the world providing support if you ever needed it. What you should also consider is the safety aspect. This machine is bearing the CE conformity marking, has safety measures that the laser is only able to run when the lid is closed making it a class 1 laser and also has an exhaust system. Most diode lasers don’t have that for example which makes them potentially harmful and not suitable for a production environment. For your home shop it’s quite a bit what they are asking, but if you use it for your small business or don’t want to tinker and just use something productively, it might really be a great and especially compact tool for you! Just take a quick look at the products that are for example sold on ETSY that were made using machines like this, be it own designs or just individualizied products for  customers. If you are creative and have good ideas, I think you can quickly calculate your return of investment. For my part, I’m really happy with the Beamo. The only thing that I’m a bit upset about is the working area, but to be honest, I don’t know if I would have had the space for a bigger machine anyways. Just as a disclaimer. I received the Beamo for free as a review unit, though all thoughts are my own and no money has exchanged hands. Let me know your thought on this machine and CO2 lasers in general, down in the description?  A great tool besides 3D printers and CNC routers or an overrated piece of equipment?

More info/buy Beamo: https://flux3dp.com/beamo/

Buy a FLUX Beamo from Matterhackers(US) (affiliate): https://geni.us/LTGF