Your main purpose is to cut wood with a laser?
This is my personal opinion:
Short answer: Buy a CO2 laser. There are plenty of choices out there.
Long answer:
The SM2 is, as it is, not that well suited for that purpose for a couple of reasons:
- There is no air assist which highly increases cutting performance and quality.
- The focus spot size of ≤0.5mm is quite large (i.e. low power density) and the short focus length of 15mm limits the max. cutting depth greatly. Furthermore, the lens are not exchangeable so you are stuck with that.
- Currently, there is no air purifier (will be available in the second half of this year).
- The 1.6W blue laser (~450nm) is quite weak for cutting wood. The wavelength is 3-4 times more efficient than that of a CO2 laser due to the absorption rate of organic materials, but CO2 lasers are highly available with ≥40W optical output power. Well, an additional 8W blue laser module will be available in the second half of this year.
- This is a class 4 laser, without AND with enclosure. So you need to keep that in mind and take the needed precaution during operation.
You may be able to cut 4-5mm, depending on the type of wood (Balsa?) and amount of additions (e.g. glue). But that will take many many passes.
SM2 is a great device to try out all these different functions (3D print, CNC, laser). And the possibility to extend it on an open source base is really attractive. However, the software is still not fully open sourced, there are still quite a lot of hardware internals missing in the documentation and some parts (like the used connectors) are proprietary. We will see how that will change or affect user made additions in the future. It is just something one needs to keep in mind when pointing out these benefits.
P.S.: Silent linear modules (see 1, 2 and 3) are planned for next month and will be default in future orders, as far as I heard.
I hope that helps you with your decision.