The BeamBuddy high resolution laser head is a replacement head for your laser. It allows you to engrave at a much higher quality than the stock laser head that came with your laser.
Its design makes the laser beam more focused into a smaller focal spot than the standard laser head, which makes the engraving result more detailed. It is suitable for engraving high precision photos and also a good performance on 3D engraving. Besides, because of the very small laser dot with high energy density, testing has shown that it can actually engrave and cut some metals directly.
Will it work with my laser?
The head is available in 3 versions right now. The first one works with the ubiquitous K40 laser, the second works with the Shenhui style laser head that accepts a 25mm tube and the third works with the Shenhui style laser head that accepts a 24mm tube. If you are unsure if it will work with your laser, send an email to sales@beambuddy.xyz and we will figure it out for you.
Details
Both versions of the high resolution laser head are capable of producing a dot size that allows for engraving at a true 600dpi. Adjustable air assist capability is built right into the head.
The higher resolution creates a significant increase in detail on the photograph. Your creations will be incredibly life like and produce very accurate reproductions of your photos. The head itself will come with a blue anodized finish that looks very sharp. (We love to bling things out!)
Pricing and Availability
The K40 type head is being offered at an introductory price of $129.95 USD
The Shenhui 25/24mm type is being offered at an introductory price of $189.95 USD
We are now taking pre-orders for the initial production run that will ship January 2020. Please note that this is limited to the first 50 pieces of the K40 head, and 50 pieces of the Shenhui 25/24mm head. We are offering these on a first come first serve basis.
Full disclosure: I am one of the partners in this company. A portion of the profits will be used towards keeping this site up and running
Interesting, Not a lot of details here though. How does it work? Built in lens? If so what is the focal length? How does it mount to a k40? Do you have pictures of it mounted?
Here are some images that have been engraved using the High Resolution head.
And we got a 0.03mm dot size from a 60W laser tube beam running through the head. That translates to 846dpi without overlap of the dots.
Interesting.
Along with @NedMan questions I would like to see a schematic of the guts.
I would also like to see its cutting characteristics. I would assume you could cut deeper with thin’r kerfs which might defer the cost of the head vs higher power laser.
Finally what source image and controller are being used to get this kind of resolution. I did not think our standard smoothie base could handle this kind of resolution?
$200 is 1/2 the cost of the machine so for me this has to be proven by a few folks on here with some clear specifications for power vs speed :)!
The depth of focus is very shallow, and the head is only 3mm above the surface of the substrate. It is really just for engraving because of the shallow depth of focus. Those images were a mix of a C3D mini and a Ruida controller.
To get the higher resolution, you do need to slow down the engraving to allow the PSU time to fire the tube off. Average engraving speed is around 200mm/s
And the K40 version is only $129.95, the Shenhui style is $189.95
As to schematics, it is not an open source design, and the internals are proprietary at this time.
Very smal FL: I wonder how sensitive it is to bed-head parallelism.
Depth of focus: I wonder how well it will cut with the Lightobject ability to adjust the Z while cutting?
Can you describe the theory of how it works? I don’t think there are too many new methods of focusing light :)! I do not need any of the lens design specifics.
What are its dimensions and how does it mount? Do I have to modify my head?
What does imaging look like with an actual 40W k40?
Standard price = $169 if I wait?
How much of the cost goes to this site? I ask cause I would subtract that from the cost of the unit in my buying decision.
May be quite an attractive alternative to getting more power…
It works on the principal of a compound lens, but not a simple stacked like the Russ Sadler/Cloudray design, the lenses are separated by a distance. It screws right on to the bottom of the stock K40 head, or also onto the top half of the Light objects air assist head. No modifications are necessary.
I can only assume that it would work with a LightBurn controlled Z for cutting.
Yes the standard price will be going up to $169 once it is a stocked product. No set amount has been decided for funding the site, basically I will take what is needed to keep the site running until Micheal gets it migrated over to the private server, and then a small reserve to cover domain name costs and any incidental expenses. (I was thinking around a $200 slush fund)
As far as I know there is a pysical limitation of focusing (point size) dependant on the wavelength. Thant’s why UV lasers are better suited for engraving than CO2 lasers, because they produce a smaller kerf.
I guess the usual lens quality on our machines is not good enough to reach that physical limit, and thats why this dual lens can produce better results.
But I think the price is a bit high and it’s not convenient to change the lens between engraving and cutting.
Anyone have any reviews of this setup? My finger is on the purchase button, but I’m curious, since it’s been out for a few months, what people’s experience has been…
Just a little shameless self promotion and clapping myself on the back, Thunder Laser has chosen our HR head as their official head after doing some testing. Under ideal conditions using a well aligned optic setup and engraving on anodized aluminum, they measured the spot size at 13.5 micrometers or 0.0135mm using an electron microscope. As well, they stated that the spot size was more consistent than their existing HR head they have been selling… This works out to an incredible 1953.85 dpi. We could not be prouder of this accomplishment!
