As with all shop machines, lasers can pose a risk of personal injury. Be sure to read and understand all of the safety information that comes with your tools and always wear appropriate eye protection.

A reviewer that actually gives objective observations as opposed to sugar coated subjective opinions?! Well done Clough.

Looks like it has some potential. The fact that they actually updated their manual when they said they would is a good sign.

They definitely picked the right person to review their product. I’ve been a fan of James and this channel since he did his lead screw project. For the cost of one laser they got a genuine review by a professional engineer. Great work as always with James

Excellent, comprehensive review. Thank you!

Love your reviews and that you don’t ONLY do reviews, you pretty objective to me!

Looking sharp today James! As always, a fantastic review.

Very good honest review. Thanks James, Merry Christmas.

James, Thank you for sharing! It's a hummm for now. Hopefully, gwek will send you all the update as available. Further, your additional review after a time would be greatly appreciated by all. Thanks again.

That was interesting. Thanks for the video keep on keeping on.

I think you should mention proper eye and lung protection. I have a friend who got an enclosed laser cutter and air removal and filtering was a big deal.

Good review, thanks.

I bought the AtomStack laser after watching your video, and I've been very pleased with the results. Might consider upgrading to this one.

As usual an excellent review thanks for your opinion

I bought one based on this video and have not been disappointed at all. There’s been some communication issues but their team is helpful. Interestingly I’ve found that varying the focal distance off of the recommended specs can make big improvements. I’m using the rotating accessory for marking brass tubes. Tech support told me I can also cut the tubes in half with enough burns which if true will be very helpful for me to mark then part off. I learn a lot from your channel but have to force myself to watch bc you are so persnickety! But I guess that’s what makes you good at what you do.

FYI you need to run some kind of vent fan or fume extractor when engraving with a fiber laser. Metals like to throw up ultra fine dust when engraved, and plastics give off nasty fumes that are obviously terrible for you.

great video, thanks for sharing!

We have been working and servicing various chinese lasers for around 10 years, there are lots of well built machines and with good customer and service support. The only downfall with most is their manuals and software. For just about most companies you have to use a backdoor when processing something. Especially when using high end software to design your components. So far, for the most part it always seems to work well with most, cnc and lasers when you utilize a second piece of software, before importing it to the proprietary software the vendor uses. 80% of the time, old versions of coreldraw seems to do the trick

If they get that working with Lightburn, or even ezcad - that is a must buy for the price it's going for.

awesome video but i must say im very surprised you didnt mention anything about enclosures and eye protection as thats a massive issue with this new wave of lasers.

Like the review, thanks James

I really appreciate your reviews. I suspect that if you have difficulty with the software, many of us would be completely lost. It does appear that the manufacturer recognized your concerns and may take steps to remedy them unless it involves large payments to us other software.

Nice review James 👍 The fast burn time is impressive.. ATB....

would love to see more in depht videos about the mashine, i backt it at kickstarter a months ago and i'm exitet to play araoud. keep up the good reviews and projekt videos, love your channel!

MOPA lasers are typically required for creating black marks on aluminum. They are higher precision fiber based systems that control heat to the substrate. MOPA lasers also produce the colors on heat reactive metals like stainless. Also the lens is solely responsible for determining the size of the workspace (i.e. 150mm x 150mm). Swapping lenses is common in order to get the smaller space for the item being etched. Power is a function of area and smaller areas (from lens selection) yield higher power/sq area and can run faster.

Don't even think of cleaning the mirrors. They are usually first surface mirrors, and will be ruined. Way back in the 80's our lab was very fortunate to purchase one of the earliest FTIR spectrometers. I think it may have been an HP model. Very expensive back then. One of the lab techs noticed some dust on one of its mirrors, cleaned it and screwed up the whole machine. On day one. Took many digit money to get it fixed.

Excellent review, would have loved to see demos and ratings of the accessories received of he roller and mini chuck rotators. Oh well maybe some one else will post them.

Nice vid, nice machine.. thanks for sharing

The current sale price seems reasonable and I wish I could buy this. It would really help me make custom heat press tooling for my leather projects (to be used for hot pressing gold leaf onto leather). Manually carving the tooling out of brass using a dremel does work (which is what I'm doing) but it's a very laborious and time consuming process. At least I'm proud to have the skills to do that. But having a way to easily make the initial design, perfectly as I've drawn it in Illustrator, (at even 0.5 mm deep) would make carving the rest of the piece away so much faster and easier. Sadly, I'm just starting to sell leather goods so I'm not making enough money to justify spending it on this machine. Maybe one day. Thanks for the info though! It's always good to learn of different methods to accomplish a result.

Thanks for the review. I recently checked the 3D printer box, now I’m looking at a laser engraver. I would prefer to have one that can cut materials such as gaskets, etc.

3 years ago i bought industry class fiber laser for engraving. This one that you presented will be enough for me for 1/10th the price :)

You’ll put your eye out!

Could you please make a video of a new front panel and flexible buttons, how you made it and how it works/looks when completed.

A nice balanced review -thanks for sharing. Although I understand the reasons, it fascinates me that something that'll mark metal will barely touch cardboard. If only I could get once through Mrs Finance Department...

I'm always amazed at how fast those galvo mirrors accelerate.

A tips at marking on aluminium, you can make the marking very dark but it takes time, so i use an acid for signmakers so when you engrave the surface and take away the oxide layer on aluminium you dropp some acid on it and it will get black in 20 seconds and doesn't rubb off either. Anyway i have been dealing with Gweike for 10 years and also visiting their factory in Jinan and they are serious and have great prices but i noticed on the bigger fiber cutters they can be a little lazy and you have to check the electronics before starting the machines otherwise their machines have never let me down and their support will help even when the warranty is out

@8:54 dark black marking aluminum isn't possible with 1064nm alone, at best you'll get a dark grey. you could use cermark or some other coating to get black. @10:47 you can soak wood in baking soda + water mix to allow marking of wood. it isn't great but it's better than nothing.

Just to clarify, just because the laser source hooks up to the laser head with a fiber optic cable, does not make it a fiber laser. Its a fiber laser because laser diodes energize a laser cavity in a loop of fiber optic cable (which is usually multi-layered), and the core is doped with a active element like neodymium which will absorb the higher wavelength from the laser diodes and then lase at 1064nm. You lose some power (which is why all those fans are running, removing the heat), but you get a very bright, coherent beam. As the optical combining of output from laser diodes get better, I expect we eventually will see fiber lasers go away, except maybe at the very high end.

@James. I have not yet read. through comments but you can get a cleaner called "First Contact Polymer" to clean the mirrors and lens. This is a coating you apply to mirror(s) (w/o touching them), let dry, and then peal off. Although not inexpensive, I highly recommend looking into purchasing some. Also, being nit a bit, this is a NIR wavelength as opposed to a CO2 laser which is in IR spectrum. Thanks for the review as I was looking into a low power fiber laser for metal stuff in my shop. If I buy one I'll use your link and you can buy me coffee... LOL Have a great day

The lack of lightburn support is a dealbreaker.

Noob question: When engraving your ELS panel, why do the labels show up as a lighter color? Is there a layer of lighter colored plastic underneath the black layer? Or does the laser discolor the plastic?

I would run an exhaust fan when engraving. Metal vapors can add up in your body over time.

could it etch circuit boards?

Try the Glowforge post processor for F360. It will make a svg file with a different colored line for each operation (e.g. Trace) in your setup. Hopefully, the included software can import the svg and take it from there.

I would love to see how thing thing can handle engraving some .999 fine silver and gold!! I have some great ideas for jewelry.

really enjoy this channel so please, please do something to prevent inhaling whatever it is you're vaporising. Eye protection is one thing but lungs are a much more serious matter.

I thought one of the reasons copper was hard to engrave with IR was because of how reflective copper is to IR, but this seems to do great. huh.

As always, brilliantly detailed and simple to understand ! As a total idiot, a question: Can this engrave glass to look like sandblasting ? I have no knowledge about these things, I was just wondering.

Can you try to make some PCBs, it would be interesting for quick prototyping.

Do you happen to know whether it can engrave transparent acrylic?

RUST REMOVAL... can you see how it goes for removing rust?

For ~$1600, it's honestly not bad -- that is, IF you can use other software to interface with it. Not very familiar with laser engravers, but judging from the Lightburn website, seems like laser engravers all use different protocols and control schemes (other than low-end/hobby-built ones that use G-code). Would be nice if there was some standardized abstraction layer for laser engravers/cutters -- kinda like HPGL or Gerber X2. Maybe there is and I don't know about it. Then the manufacturer could either include a translator program to convert it into machine-specific controls OR the controller could accept it directly if it had a more powerful MCU. Edit: I guess you could use Inkscape, Illustrator, ACAD, or F360 ... assuming the included software can properly convert from SVG or DXF without mangling the layer assignments and scaling... lol

I'm curious if you tried using it to "etch" a PCB? I've long been curious about how well such a lower power fiber laser would fare at that task. The current cost of this laser is attractive to me if I can use it to quickly make prototype PCBs.

Hi, I have just received information on G-Weike chat that G2 20W Laser will be compatible with lightburn in late Mar or early Apr. Hopefully so.

Very interesting. Software is always the problem with these types of machines as well as some inexpensive CNC machines and 3D printers. I’m not sure what the people in these companies are thinking about compatibility, but they should be more concerned, as it holds sales back. I would buy this other than for the software., though I would really like something more powerful, in the order of 60 watts and a larger working area, though they do get expensive. This one is not expensive.

this vs the pecker should be good for the market, although I do wish it were a bit more polished

I bought a 20 watt laser last year. What I found is that if I want burned bit of wood the stove does it cheaper and quicker

Second time watching this, I guess YT saw I needed more laser info, anyways according to them Lightburn is now useable. I haven't tested this myself though, still looking for a real fiber like this one, instead of "fiber-like."

Has an AR lower receiver engraved with one of these when I SBR’ed it. Very cool.

Marco Reps did a nice review of a 60w fiber laser. Think you might want to check his video out. Patreon only. His obsessive precision suits you

You should have tried to carv out some ´PCBs, 20w fiber laser should work fine for that

If it's anything like EZcad2 (and it moatly seems so from the few images) the software will accept ai files but very old verions. Try selecting older versions when exporting. Also keep a close eye un the "Mark Selected" or rather Select Mark checkmark at the bottom because if its unchecked it will engrave everything you have on the workspace rather then what you actually have selected.

We got one of these at work. It was fantastic and marked steel, plastic, aluminum, titanium, and painted surfaces no problem at all. Then after about two months, the IR laser quit working and it only "engraved" with the red LED from that point on. I'm sure it's some dumb problem in the laser unit but it went into the junk pile and hasn't been touched since.

How long does it take to blind you? Im guessing it can do it pretty quick .

The fact that copper is difficult to engrave with an IR laser has less to do with its thermal conductivity than with the high reflection and, conversely, the low absorption of copper at a wavelength of 1064 nm. The absorption here is only 4%. This means that of the 20 W, only approx. 0.8 W is absorbed by the material and can be used for the actual engraving. Steel has an absorption of approx. 40%. It is therefore much easier to engrave. If you change the laser wavelength to green or blue, things look completely different. As for the GWeike package, I find it incredible what you can get for your money these days. However, I would invest in better safety goggles. I can't stress this enough: Actual certified laser safety glasses cost $200. Much cheaper than a new pair of eyes. Remember the 4% absorption of copper? Well, in the worst case 96% of the laser power is reflected right back onto your face.

It seems like a nice unit, although the deal breaker for me is they don't have a mounting bracket for a shark's head.

What's preventing the laser beam from reflecting off a workpiece and causing an eye injury? I'm used to things like an Epilog, which has a laser-tight enclosure and interlocks to ensure it's closed before applying power to the beam.

Does anybody have a recommendation for a similar product but more refined to "just work" if I intend to use this in a business setting where time is money and fiddling around is not acceptable?

I just sold my 30w JPT source galvo. the market is becoming saturated with these units so I needed that value back out of it before I look to upgrade to a 60 MOPA. I will agree though, the lack of light burn usability is a dealbreaker for me now. EZcad2 is an absolute abomination. eventually we will see domestically sourced high watt mopas soon with great software to pair with it for some respectable asking prices.

LB support is here ! Beta 1.6 or ask Gweike for 1.7. Official LB release is coming very soon.

I bought into the kickstarter for this thing. I ordered the g2 with 110x110 work area, manual lift, chuck rotary and roller rotary. This was in August. They assure me that it is due to arrive in the East US warehouse next week. Probably. I should receive it on to two weeks after it arrives in the east US warehouse. Probably. I feel like such a chump. I promised my customers that I would be able to provide samples late November. Maybe some time in January. Maybe. And I missed the detail that it is not supported by Lightburn...

haha I like the gummy bears cameo 11:37

Can it etch granite?

I could get past the software problem by using Flexisign for the designing, but not being able to burn wood is a big turn off :( shame, I actually looked into these to upgrade my cheap chinesium laser.

LightBurn support should really be table stakes for any of these laser cutters/engravers. It makes their products way more desirable, really not sure why these companies always skimp on getting their tools included in the software everybody actually _wants_ to use.

I feel like we're being baited with those gummy bears and the laser in the same frame. I was going to watch till the end anyway, I swear!

ive worked with galvo lasers before... I think i would have cleaned the galvo mirror off. ive seen those mirrors get burned. very expensive and a huge pain in the butt to replace.

How will this handle Polymer or ABS

Have a hitec 60watt mopa m7. Not gotten black marks on aluminum. I thought it was impossible on aluminum.

I wouldn't use such a laser without proper air treatment like at least a HEPA filter plus activated carbon filter, The dust and gases this thing throws out in the air is not great for your health.

Pretty surprised it doesn't even support EZ Cad

Can it etch prototype pcbs?

C-CAD? C-Light? Is that how you spell it? I can't find it on Google

@7:39 pet-g! yay!

when you save your Illustrator work files as .AI and when you click save , illustrator options don't chose illustrator 2021 instead use illustrator 3 and it should read it

if you rub-in some squized lemon juice on aluminum and stainless before you laze them you'l get beautifully dark engravement.

Did I see a giant gummy bear tub there?! That can only mean one thing PRUSA XL content haha

For black alu engravings you need a mopa or uv laser. Just saying.

Link doesn't work.

The fiber will give you white on anodized aluminum. Back the power off and maybe speed it up some. If you're cutting thru the anodize you're running the power too high.

What is a "galvo diode laser"? I assume this would be a regular continuous wave diode laser but shot in to a galvo head? Those actually exist? I've never seen one. Real fiber lasers are usually powered by a diode laser, boosted via the fiber, that's how it works.

I wonder what level of eye protection is needed to operate these

Can the laser be used to remove tattoos?

As a note, today, 10 december 2023, they have it "on sale" with 1000$ off :) But it seems that "regular" price is 2499 for 110mm and for 150mm, and that seems wrong. Maybe they should pay attention to details (marketing side) and don't start with a lie..? "G2 20W Metal & Plastic Fiber Laser Engraver Sale price$1,599.00 Regular price$2,499.00 Sale SAVE $1000" and "G2 20W Metal & Plastic Fiber Laser Engraver Sale price$1,999.00 Regular price$2,499.00 Sale SAVE $1000"

Where does the metal go?

Time to etch a PCB

Fix the software and I think that's one hell of a machine

Oof no lightburn support.

انت بطل

...I personally didn't make that mistake twice, but I've heard stories 😂😂😂...