I’d thought I share my thoughts on my specific needs in case it helps anyone in their evaluation of whether to get the 10W laser module. I was anxiously awaiting the release of the 10W laser, but was a bit shocked at the price. Each person would have to make their own decision on whether it is worth it, but for me it seemed a bit steep just for the laser module. I looked around to see what other alternatives there are and stumbled upon xTool (I am not associated with xTool and am an original A350 backer and have all of the Snapmaker accessories–rotary module, stop button). They have a 10W laser xTool D1 and they also currently have a kickstarter campaign for the xTool M1 (laser cutter and blade cutter combined).
After considering my needs, I opted to back the xTool M1 kickstarter campaign. It is more expensive than just the Snapmaker 10W module, but it provides the ability for me to take the tool to my work (e.g., engrave a tabletop, large cutting board or larger material). The 10W laser also seems to have a better focal point at 0.08mm x 0.08mm compared to Snapmaker 0.05mm x 0.2mm. The larger 2nd measure may have an impact on kerf size/cut quality, but can’t be sure until folks actually get the module and test it out. I also wanted to have the ability to cut materials with the cutting tool (e.g., decals, leather, etc.), so that is also a plus for me to justify paying a higher price.
Their products (i.e., the D1 since that product is being sold currently and what I assume the M1 laser is based on) seem to get good reviews (there are a number of YouTube videos) that give me some comfort that the M1 will be a good product. I think the main question for me is whether the software is good or not. They have indicated future light burn compatibility, but that is not available as of right now.
If anyone is interested in checking it out, below is an affiliate link. xTool M1
Agreed that the pricing is off. Snapmaker is charging more for a laser board and fan than competitors charge for the laser, fan, carriage, logic board, user interface, and power supply.
@jcknox yep. Their pricing is out of control. I don’t know why they think the outrageous prices for the addons are acceptable, but they aren’t. They’ve adopted the Apple way of pricing and there is no way I’m going to be getting that laser, I can get an entire laser machine for cheaper and with the same power of laser. Snapmaker is getting ridiculous on their pricing and it’s eventually going to come back to bite them. I was looking forward to the dual extruder but seeing how they are setting their prices lately I’ve decided to forego purchasing it since it’ll probably be priced at like $600. I’m actually probably just going to sell my entire Snapmaker collection, all the addons, machine and enclosure, I’m getting pretty fed up with them. Between them now completely ignoring the forum since Edwin left without replacing him, their pricing practices, and a piece of information I found out from a friend that is highly respected in China in the 3D printing industry, I’m disillusioned with Snapmaker now.
I too was anxiously awaiting the more powerful laser. The original was only good for some marking, but not cutting much else than cardboard. After spending hours playing with it in the beginning I have not used it much since, simply because it cannot always cut even 2mm of wood.
The ability to cut through 5-6mm of wood would suffice for most of my projects, and the 10W laser should manage that. But thinking rationally I can’t come up with anything at all that could justify the price. Paying 400€ to do a handful of small projects? That would make them ridiculously expensive. If I really need the precision from a laser cut, I could have it done by professionals with some real tools and not be limited to a small size either. I guess my cheap jigsaw wont retire after all.
I am disappointed. I bougth into the idea of modularity and expansion, but at this pricing there is nothing even worth considering. It’s not that I can’t afford it. I’m just not stupid enough. The original laser is just a toy and CNC is too weak for anything else than wood. It seems I have ended up with an overpriced 3D printer, which started messing with calibration after the latest firmware. Well, you learn from your mistakes and move on. Luckily I haven’t yet wasted money on other addons.
A quick survey of the forum shows that people are still having incredible difficulty with camera calibration for laser as well as for suggested work settings that just don’t work like they should for the 1.6 w laser.
I’m fully expecting that someday staff will return to the forum and they’ll just reply to all of these threads when anybody has an issue with camera calibration that they need to instead buy the 10 watt laser and the camera calibration is no longer supported for the 1.6 w laser or something to that effect
I’m personally happy with my Snapmaker (A150) and have had little trouble with it on all functions, the 1.6w laser works well for what it is, I even managed to cut through 2mm thick black acrylic after multiple passes. The 10w laser is definitely expensive, but not so egregious that it’s outside of what I expected. I’ve seen many laser diode sets between 5w to 8w from other companies that sell in the $350 to $650 range.
Of course you can find much cheaper laser diodes on Amazon, eBay or Aliexpress with claims of being 10w, 20w, 40w, etc but I question the validity as well as the build quality. I’m not an advocate for Snapmaker but I do understand their pricing as it looks like a real solid piece of engineering with excellent build quality. I’m actually much more upset at the fact that the 10w laser module is not compatible with my A150 more so than the price. Sure I could buy a Xtool with a 10w laser for $649 (sale price) but the 10w laser module is still cheaper at $399, not to mention buying another machine defeats the purpose of the Snapmaker.
I fully understand. Not being available at all surely sucks more than a high price. Not to mention that the promise of modularity and expandability is broken (again).
I too was mostly happy with mine. The first impression was of quality. The over the top “art brochure type” manual caught my attention of being a bit of overkill, but I thought that if everything has the same attention to detail, then it is all good. It has worked reasonably well. The camera calibration of the laser never worked, but manual did so I didn’t care.
Then I ran into a couple of discoveries that woke me up to realities. First a firmware update messed up the leveling and z-offsets. Haven’t they tested? Then I saw the forum is full of it: it is not rare and should have been identified and fixed before it was released. Whats worse, it still isn’t fixed after 2 and a half months. Thankfully someone has found a workaround. Then I opened the PSU to finally get rid of the noise and was shocked to find out that the the air inlet was almost fully blocked. Why? In order to block/diffuse the completely unnecessary and annoying light! The realization that they had priorized completely meaningless bling bling over function destroyed the last illusions of “engineering quality”.
Reading through these forums, it seems most early adopters are practical people how know their stuff. The engineer, handy men, maker, doer type of people. Instead Snapmaker focus on the fanboi type. Those who only like to show off their phones, watches, shoes and clothes. Especially that brand with old hardware in fancy plastic and a tenfold price. And Teslas if they have too much money to spend. But I’ve never seen this type of people show off their power drill or mitre saw (or 3D printer for that matter). They don’t know how to use them. Snapmaker focuses on the wrong market for this kind of product, not many potential customers. If then the early adopters and loyal users start to jump ship to other products, I can’t see how Snapmaker will survive. And a third of them (those who bought the A150) are not even given a choice.
Don’t get me wrong, I will still use my Snapmaker as long as it works and for things it can actually do. But I no longer see any reason at all to expand it. Which was one of the main reasons for getting it. In the end I would have ended up with better tools (and cheaper too), had I bought three dedicated machines instead of going the snapmaker route: first the snapmaker, then a printhead with sufficient cooling, then a working laser, and new rails… And it will still be a compromise, except for the cost. Luckily I can still cut my losses, not having started the upgrading swamp yet.
Support got back to me on the request for a backer discount. The roughly 15% discount they are giving everyone is all they are offering - nothing more for backers. This is really disappointing. If they do another kickstarter, potential backers need to know that any benefit from giving them money a year in advance will expire before all the extras are released.
What did you expect? They are a company. Not a non-profit organization.
At least they delivered something decent after the Kickstarter and didn’t just take your money and ran with it.
Brvdboss, you’re absolutely correct. They are a business and rely on each additional sale for their survival. Those sales are based on pricing, quality of their product, as well as their reputation for keeping promises. There were many “backers get discounts on future add-ons” promises made in the Kickstarter comments. All I - and several others - are pointing out here is that the current business decisions they are making are costing them present and future sales from previously satisfied customers.
@insomniac_designer the 20w and 40w they advertise are power draw ‘input’, the 40w equates to about 5W output.
@brvdboss i agree, they are a company and have to sell their products at above the cost it took them to make, but the problem is you can get a 10w output laser that works for most 3d printers for about $150, I have one and it’s amazing. There was a furniture store close to me that did very well for many decades but they went out of business because they suddenly decided to stop selling any furniture that their clientele could even afford and started selling furniture that only rich people could afford, they were not in a rich person area they were in the ghettos. The cheapest dresser they had was $10k, my point is that Snapmaker seems to think that their customers will pay any price they set. I seriously doubt that the 10w laser head cost even half the price they are asking.
Giving some discounts to your backers/early adopters/most loyal and enthusiastic customers is free advertising that cost nothing, you only earn a little bit less. It’s not like they lose money on those disconts. You’d be amazed at the margins for niche stuff like this. Anyone play golf and paid 150-200$ for a simple piece of metal (with a shaft) of a specific brand just because some friend liked them? Or know the true mfg cost for a 1000$ smartphone? The pricing has nothing to do with manufacturing cost and everything to do with what they believe they can charge. And by the looks of recent pricing they are misjudging their customers.
The other part of the equation is: what does it cost to lose your loyal customers? Anyone’s guess, but in the 90’s when I studied marketing in Business School, there was some study that said that positive word of mouth is on average spread to four people and negative to thirteen. Now in the days of internet/forums/fb/twitter/what else you can multiply those numbers by 1000 or 10 000?
As for me personally, I don’t care that much about the laser (if I did, I would get it no matter what…). Rather it was one of the few addons I would seriously consider, and now that it is out of the question, so are all other future upgrades.
It is also sad to see the beginning of the end to this story already. This type of pricey all-in-one machine will never become a mass market product, no matter how much you advertise. Instead you have to build a brand by reputation and a growing loyal customer base. So far I haven’t heard of anyone here who definitively will buy it, most are giving it a pass. So who WILL buy it?
P.S: I come from Nokia land and I could tell 2 years in advance what would happen to them, solely based on a slight change in attitude: going from listening to their customers to starting to believe they own them. And they were still the biggest global phone manufacturer at the time, not an enthusiast backed startup…
Maybe 5-10% once they get production ramped up. Any reseller with a real store will take 20%-30%. Online shops may take 10-15%. Or how come I could just ordered filament for 14€/roll that normally costs 20-25€ and everybody is till making a killing on the black friday sales? They didn’t create this black friday thing to sell at a loss…
Only Snapmaker knows their own numbers, no point in us discussing those. But to give you some idea, most electronics that I know the real costs of (based on on the job experience) are being sold for at least 3-4 times the cost for it to be made (including manufacturing & packaging), otherwise you can’t be profitable as a company. As they also sell through other channels (distributers/resellers) they also need a significant margin, then there are other operational costs, marketing etc.
Only SM can tell. They are not a high volume company as far as I understand.
Here on the forum everyone is super critical, from what I understood the facebook crowd is a lot less critical (hearsay as I don’t have a facebook account).
@brvdboss you still missed my point that it is 3x as expensive than other lasers that are just as powerful and cross compatible with most 3D printers on the market. Why would you want to buy one for Snapmaker’s price when you can get one of the same power for drastically cheaper if you already own another printer.
I found a couple of laser engravers/cutters which seem to be using the same technology as the Snapmaker 10W module, they seem to be in the $650-$750 range so I don’t think the Sm unit is far off the mark.
Yes, but the SM is overall 3 times as expensive than some other devices. That’s nothing new.
Creality also has a 3 in 1 device that (build volume wise) sits in between the A150 and A250 and retails for 500EUR
On the other hand you have a brand like ZMorph that has a similar device that sells for 4000EUR and sells their 2.8W(!!!) laser for for 550EUR
I personally think the SM2 is on the expensive side, but you do get significantly more than with the Creality device. Probably not three times more, but that’s just the principle of diminishing returns on an investment.
(And personally I’m still very happy with my A350, despite some frustrations as well)
I agree with you. I don’t think it’s priced unfairly, expensive yes but not unfair. SM seems to want to strive at being a more premium brand offering excellent build quality and aesthetics. While that will turn off a certain crowd it’s actually fine with me. I mean you can buy a Prusa SL1-S 3D printer for $2000 or you can buy an Anycubic Photon Mono for $200 with similar work volume and print speed, but one printer is clearly better than the other in multiple facets. Sure there are diminishing returns the higher in price you go but it’s like that with everything else.
In regards to the laser discussion I think some people only think about material costs. There’s also R&D, tooling/manufacturing, certifications and packaging which can be quite expensive, that cost has to be recouped and the product has to ultimately turn a profit. The 10w laser module looks like it had some real thought put into it with its cooling, optics, and improved camera which is all tailored and tuned specifically to give you optimal performance on their machine. SM is also a relatively low production company in the grand scheme of things so they may not be able to get the best manufacturing rates like some other company that just wants a more traditional laser head using all off the shelf ready made parts from a manufacturer.
For me the pricing of the new 10w module isn’t terrible as I’ve seen worse from other companies, not to mention for the cost it comes packed with other goodies including glasses. I’d actually buy one at $399 if it were compatible with my A150 as the convenience of a 3 in 1 and staying within the same ecosystem using the same software for all modes is worth the premium cost of the modules to me. It’s still cheaper and more space saving to buy the laser module than buying a whole new dedicated machine like a Xtool. With that said I was always planning on buying a second SM machine for increased productivity (either the A250 or A350) so I know I’ll be able to use the 10w laser module eventually, but the lack of any new module support on the A150 is a bit worrying and does have me second guessing its future. I hope they give us a clear road map of their intentions.
I agree entirely. It would be good to find out or figure out why the 10W is not supported on the A150. I’ve ordered it and when I get it I’ll see if anything is obvious.
Have you tried emailing support? The sales people have been really fast at repling to me recently so that might be the way to approach them, sales may get answers from the designers and engineers where we can’t.
Well I know its not a power issue as all models use the same power supply. I know it’s not a mounting issue as all models use the same mounting plate. I don’t think it’s a clearance issue as I don’t know what the 10w laser module would even run into. There’s really only two reasons I can think of as to why the new laser module is not compatible.
The 10w laser module is REALLY HEAVY and the single z-axis linear module of the A150 can’t reliably move the laser module around at intended feedrates without missed steps. This however seems unlikely as the 1.6w laser module weighs in at 300 grams (.66lbs) while the CNC module weighs 622 grams (1.37lbs). I doubt the new 10w laser module weighs significantly more than the CNC module, in fact other 10w laser heads from other brands don’t weigh drastically more than their 5w and 2w counterparts, maybe double at most. Let’s say the 10w SM laser module weighs in at 750 grams, that should still be within the weight parameters of what the A150’s z-axis can reliably operate under.
SM is artificially making the 10w laser head incompatible, either by software or just only claiming that it works for the A250 and A350.