Best Laser Engraver for Beginners
My first laser engraver was a small portable unit that I wanted to see how much I'd like it but did not realize they have inexpensive CNC-like platform and reading other reviews, decided to try this one.
Buying a cheap laser engraver could be a tough task since there are tons of merchants on the market.This Atomstack A5 Pro model is my first recommended engraving machine for beginners.You can engrave with the A5 Pro on wood, paper, bamboo, leather, aluminum oxide and certain plastics.
The setup itself is not difficult at all in my opinion. I would highly suggest setting up the unit on a very flat surface such as a table or in my case I have two stacked MDF with formica on top when I do woodworking and want a very flat surface.
The tricky part is, finding the driver at least for Windows 10. There's a driver called CH340 that you want to Google and load and install the software called Lightburn.
Once the software is installed and the driver loaded, you'll be able to connect the laser to the Lightburn software and start playing around with sample files including shapes and other templates. There's a lot to cover in terms of how to set this up properly but you'll want to manually move the unit to 0, 0 position which you can see with the pre-printed ruler on the frame and the body where the laser is being held.
After that, you'll want to measure the size of the piece that you're trying to engrave and input that into the project file. The rest is controlling the speed and power simply put and while there are so many features that I have not even tried, it's working out really well.
Since this is a Atomstack laser engraver, it will produce smoke obviously especially with wood products and do recommend using a high-grade fume extractor or a way to clean air so it does not trigger the smoke detector.
Otherwise, I will use this in an open space such as the garage or outside even or where you can push the air out the window as the deeper and slower the engraving you perform, the more smoke it will obviously produce.
The unit is very quiet other than the high-speed fan running right above the laser to cool the diode but I'm very happy with the performance so far.
