Just wondering if anyone has heard any rumour or news of a 70/80w laser module coming from Snapmaker?
Most of the competition have now had these out for a while, so I would have thought it was at least in the pipeline.
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Is there technical limits in the power supply design and distribution on this?
I am debating whether to wait, or whether to buy one of the 80w lasers from the competition.
Im not sure true 80w laser diodes are available to the public (though I’m sure they exist in various R&D labs right now). Now, there are laser machines/laser heads that are marketed as 80w, but if you read the descriptions you’ll find that they consume 80w and output between10w to 20w. It’s dishonest marketing but technically not a lie.
Snapmaker’s laser modules however are advertised using the output power, so the 40w laser for example actually outputs 40w of power, making it 2x-4x more powerful than these “80w” laser diodes you find online.
Now of course I’m open to being 100% wrong so if there is in fact a true 80w laser diode that is up for sale I’d love to see it.
I believe that both Creality and X-Tool have 80w lasers in the pipeline, but my google-fu is failing me to find references. I did find a 60w Falcon from Creality ( https://store.creality.com/au/products/creality-falcon2-pro-60w ), but at a morbidly expensive price. Maybe the power losses of combining was greater than they thought and this is what was originally going to be the 80w unit?
And yes - I certainly wouldn’t believe the ratings from AliExpress, etc., for the exact reasons you described.
Yeah that 60w laser is very expensive. For that kind of money you can definitely start looking at CO2 lasers. There’s probably a good reason why 80w lasers (the diode variety) aren’t a thing right now, the cost would probably be astronomical, not to mention the size of the laser module would be quite big.
I do think we will eventually see 80w laser modules but as to when is the real question. Whether its 1 year away or 3, one things for sure, it won’t be cheap.
I can’t speak as to what Snapmaker is doing, but I wouldn’t be suprised if they have at least tinkered with a 60w to 80w prototype laser module at their R&D department. It’s the next logical step after 40w afterall, and the folks at Snapmaker don’t seem to be the type to sit idly by. They’re constantly working on new things.
All I’m aware of is Atomstack’s 70W laser, and this seems to be very new and claims to be the world’s first (whatever that means): iKier K1 Pro Max 70W Combo: Leistungsschaltbare, geschlossene Diodenla – Atomstack DE
Thanks for sharing, I truly appreciate that. That thing looks like a beast. Not quite 80w, but it’s close.
Agreed. I put 70/80w in the post (not title), as I’m aware that the diode combining that happens in these modules leads to losses, and I suspect that those that are 80w are that at the diodes (8x10 or 16x5, or whatever), but the effective output at the lens is then ~70watt, as the reliable(ish) research I’ve been able to do suggests this.
Just out of couriosity: What are your use cases for such a beast? I personally stick with the 10W, since it does all I need and/or the price of the 20/40 W lasers is too high to be justified for the very rare occasions I can imagine I might benefit from more power. But perhaps that’s my lack of creativity - so enlighten me 
EDIT: Having the 2W IR laser now and seeing how it is limited by the 2 Watts, my wish in the direction of the engineers would be: Come up with a more powerful IR laser.
I know you’re asking the original poster, but a reason why I might want more power is for cutting down the time it takes to run a cutting/engraving job. For example a 10w laser can usually cut through 3mm thick black acrylic in one pass at a feedrate of 100mm to 125mm per minute. A 40w laser would be able to cut it at around 400mm a minute, and a 70w to 80w laser would be able to do it at 650mm to 750mm a minute. So I could potentially reduce a 20 minute cutting job down to 3 minutes or so.
If you’re running a small business from your home that requires a lot of laser cutting I can see a 40w to 80w laser being a great investment. Though as a pure personal hobby machine I think 10w to 20w is probably the sweet spot for most people.
As for the IR laser, how are liking it? I’m a little bit interested in it.
So far I have only done my PCB tests - based on that I’d say:
Good:
Bad:
I will soon try glass engraving and see if it is different from blue laser glass engraving - I’m hoping to skip the step of painting the glass first, but Skreelink’s first tests seem to discourage this expectation… we’ll see.
My preliminary verdict is: It is a good product. The expectations that it did not match were my unrealistic hopes and assumptions, and I can hardly blame the product for it, all facts were on the table before I pushed the purchase button.
That said, I feel the price for the unit to again be on the expensive side, as for many Snapmaker products. I had a 200 € voucher I could use here - if I did not have it past then, I’m not sure I’d bought the unit. Not with just 50 € off for preorder.
You’re not going to be running a small business with a Snapmaker laser, that can’t even cut clear acrylic. You won’t be in business very long. LOL. Someone needs to figure out a diode laser that can do clear.
Cutting black acrylic was just my own personal example, though there are a lot of materials that a high powered diode laser can cut, just clear acrylic is something it cant do. If you’re building a small business based on cutting clear acrylic you’ll want a CO2 laser for that, though for colored acrylic, wood, foamboard, and leather a diode laser will be a good investment. It really just depends on the kinds of products or services you offer as a small business owner.
My use would be for cutting steel for lighting gobos. So 0.1-0.3mm steel. It can sorta just be done with smaller lasers, but multiple passes and heat warping seem to be a thing (20w laser). I could probably use the 40w laser, but a larger one would allow quicker/cleaner cuts, which, when you’re blowing up the original cut 1000x with a light, you want it as clean as possible.
CO2 for cutting metal needs to be a couple of hundred watt, so that’s out of the question.
If there’s no sign/suggestion/hint of a larger laser coming, then I might just have to bight the bullet on the 40w and suck it and see, but I’ve done this a couple of times with snapmaker, only to have a larger unit pop out shortly after I’ve received the smaller one. I’d like to avoid that double-dipping, if I can.
And yes - insomniac_designer’s mention of faster (and usually cleaner) cuts on other materials is also a bonus.
On your PCB tests - are you vapourising the copper, or just a mask on top for etching? I’ve done the mask quite happily with the 10w laser.
snapUser - the blue diode laser won’t cut clear, ever… it’s a matter of physics and wavelengths, ridiculously high amounts just pass straight through. It just cut get enough photons to collide/absorb in the material. CO2 can. Theoretically, they migh be able to make an IR diode laser that can do it, but I don’t know enough about getting the “laser” part (both parallel direction and focus) in an IR diode (or whether they can ramp up the strength), and the only IR diodes I have seen are the low power, high spread ones used in remotes, IR lighting and signal beams, none of which are even close to “laser”.
I’m vapourising the copper layer.
As I understand it, the 2W IR laser is a diode laser actually… And that makes me hope: The same optical combination techniques they use to bring together the beams of blue diodes will also work for IR light, so it will be a matter of time until someone will construct a higher wattage IR diode laser.
That you’re vapourising the copper gives me hope. While its’ very thin on a PCB, most tests also show it as the hardest to cut. The 10w blue laser definitely doesn’t even think of marking copper on a PCB. Thanks.
Let’s hope on the IR 2W laser.
PCB isolation routing is very slow, and if you’ve epoxy based PCB, it leaves soot that spoils the insulation - see here: 2W laser first test: PCB does work (with restrictions & slow...)!