Kickstarter

Finally, an affordable US assembled LASER cutter / engraver with great capabilities and easy to use print driver at a price that non-big businesses can afford.

We designed this LASER from the ground up to set a new standard in affordable LASER technology for precision cutting and engraving. It has numerous features that make it the best LASER the world has ever seen at this price point.

There is a 20"x12" work area, high quality (metal terminal) 40w CO2 LASER tube and precision CNC made hardware to deliver never before seen quality at this level of affordability. The precision built mirror mounts reduce the need for post factory alignment. The beam combiner is also built in standard at the #1 mirror. Novel sliding lens holder and removable floor allow materials of any size to be placed beneath the LASER.

-Design = DONE

-Functional prototype = DONE

-First batch assembly = in progress! but our first batch is relatively small. Everything is in place to scale up just as soon as this kickstarter is funded.

When it is released for $3,499 it will be the best LASER under $10k on the market. For most tasks the output of our laser is comparable to vastly more expensive units. Take the following comparison for example.

We found the design online and repeated it on the back.

Just for fun.

... and with our removable bed our new 5th Generation Hobby Laser could actually engrave a surface that large - in many 20"x12" increments.

This new laser is the best we've come up with. It has better performance and more features than any laser ever released at this price point and built in the USA. We hope you will fund this kickstarter and get to own one of these amazing machines! We have done everything already. Design, prototype, even the first batch is under way. A kickstart could boost our production speed to the next level. Email sales@fslaser.com if you have any questions.

The new design turned a lot of heads.  Especially when we matched the output of the more expensive laser. (Note: the sparkly LEDs behind the grill are only for show and will not be included in the production model, but you can certainly add them yourself when you get yours!)

Same external footprint and lighter, it can still ship with FedEx or UPS.

We're really proud of our new laser.  We've been working on it, really ever since we came together in our founders garage a few years ago.  This is the ultimate realization of everything we believed a desktop laser could be at a price that we knew we could make it for!  We're finally done designing, prototyping and assembling it all here in Las Vegas.  We're thrilled with how it turned out and we believe that at this price and these capabilities it can be a real game-changer, finally providing LASER capabilities to a broader audience and thus greatly enabling the Maker Movement.  At the price I can't think of a better tool to start or to continue making things yourself or to start or enhance your business.  Whether for your satisfaction or for your business this LASER can do things no other tool can and is useful in so many applications.  We hope you get one and that you like it as much as we do!

Here are just a few examples of the cuts and engravings you can make with a LASER like this.  With this tool you'll be able to cut up to about 1/4" in acrylic, soft/medium wood, card stock, MDF, fabrics, leather etc., and engrave on many other materials.  Please visit facebook.com/fslaser for many more examples by us and our customers.

The infrared from a CO2 laser is great for etching the color out of anodized metals like this black anodized piece above.  For bare metal you need to use a spray called Thermark.  It allows you to mark bare metal black.

Amazing for model making!

Model making is of course needed for many careers. Set design, architecture, hobbyist, artists, curators - many people need the ability to quickly and precisely cut pieces to construct scale models.  The repeatability is key. Imagine cutting all the parts for something highly repeatable like a model picket fence by hand!  Once you have the design it can be endlessly replicated with the laser.

Cutting Grip Tape (No more cramping hands and dull razor blades!)

Precision cutting even on tough materials:  Anyone who's cut grip tape the old fashioned way (with razor blade) knows how the stuff eats through blades like no other and the wear and tear it puts on your hand!.  Plus cutting things like perfect circles are really, really hard to do by hand.  Skateboard shops make simple cuts by folding the grip tape over the edge and running a screwdriver over the edge to make a rip zone.  In this design that was not possible.  Using Corel Draw I easily drew the design overlayed on a digital photo of the part I took with my phone scaled to real life size.  Then simply hit print and sent it to the Hobby Laser. The 40w cut tube through the rugged grip tape like butter with zero dull blades and without giving myself carpal tunnel syndrome! :)   

Acrylic Cutting and Engraving.

Acrylic is an ideal plastic for use with CO2 lasers.  CO2 lasers produce infrared which melts the plastic smoothly when vectoring and engraves nicely when rastering (especially for cast acrylic).

Wood Working

Just imagine the difficulty - no impossibility of trying to achieve this fine a cut without a laser.  Simply not possible even for the best scroll saw artists.  

Engraving work is also very valuable:

Our print driver Retina Engrave lets you "invert" bitmaps so you can engrave the negative or positive space at the push of a button, as shown above.

It is also possible to engrave photos with this laser:

Dithering is the process of taking a gradient bitmap like a grey scale image and converting it into a 1 bit bitmap by translating areas of darkness to areas of denser pixel occurrence.  Lighter areas have lower density of dark pixels.  In Retina Engrave we give you two types of dithering algorithms to choose from built into the interface. So getting great results from photos is easy, no intermediary software required.

Stone Work:

There are many, many more possibilities.  Be sure to Like us on facebook and see what some of our customers have posted.

facebook.com/fslaser

With cuts and engravings that no other tool can achieve it's easy to see why lasers have been staples of industry for several decades now.  Thanks to this project you can finally have your own high-functioning LASER capable of giving you great results right out of the box with our full hardware/software solution. 

This project gives you some great opportunities to make it pay for itself with return on investment because it can allow you to produce value literally out of thin air and some electricity (uses only a fraction of the power your average microwave oven does).

-Full Spectrum Laser, Las Vegas, NV.