Bob's Tool Shop

What constitutes a Fourth Generation machine? Everything is included in the box! Industrial mechanical construction with little or no assembly required.   Improved safety with a full enclosure that does not let the raw laser light out.  Full cable management. Maintain  the small spot size for more precision Interior lighting to help with setup and observing the system in operation. Built-in camera for use with Lightburn. Exhaust fan built into the machine  Rotary system included Well-documented setup and operating instruction in the native language of the country being delivered to. Technical support directly from the manufacturer. Additional Thoughts There may need to be more than the small exhaust fans in these machines to overcome the stack effect in a house when trying to exhaust from a basement location. A powered Z-axis system for autofocus would be interesting. A little air from a variable air assist keeps the laser lens clean when engraving.  I manually manage the engraving and

  The Monport K40 series of CO2 laser engravers have slowly evolved into a more flexible tool using controller hardware that now supports Lightburn software.  We also have better control of the power output of the laser. A CO2 laser is different from an LED laser in several ways.  First, the laser beam is a different frequency of light than the Blue LED lasers allowing the CO2 laser to engrave and cut through materials that the LED laser cannot.  The CO2 laser uses a high-voltage power supply to excite the CO2 gas in the laser tube; the laser also needs water cooling.      One of the significant advantages of the K40 laser is the complete enclosure to protect the user from the high voltage power supply and Laser emissions.  While the enclosure also limits the engraving area of the laser to about 8 in by 12 inches, the safety features are very welcome.  This is a bit like the limited space on most 3D printers, and we need to understand it. Out of the box, the K40 is a fully functional d