Anyone else see this little gadget? Obviously, not a patch on the Glowforge but a lot of interesting opportunities working outside the box. I have an unboxed engraver though and glasses are a pain, engraving out in the open with the possibility of other people getting a flash reflected off a surface is a worry and the smoke… Yeh that’s not great. Still, interesting:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/880456201/cubiio-the-most-compact-laser-engraver
interesting. definitely has some potential for very small businesses, or customizing pre-made things / food.
they have a curious hack about getting around laser classes, it seems; on its own, it’ll only engrave with up to 500mW of power, while if you use it in conjunction with the their shield, it’ll pump it up to 800mw.
now if only i could be ludicrously dangerous and plug my 4W laser into that…
I’m curious, what does the extra 3.5W get you in terms of cutting / engraving power? i.e. what will a 4W do that a 0.5W won’t?
I have the 1W Mr Beam which ran on Kickstarter a long while back and I do wonder if it’s worth looking at upgrading it to a higher power and adding air assist and better air cooling for the laser (which I honestly don’t trust because it overheats and cuts out often).
I know I dropped the money down for a Pro unit but I would have expected it to be about half the price it is.
But I’m a penny pincher to the core. Glowforge had a better sales pitch.
I’m kind of with you on that - I’m always surprised by the price of low wattage laser cutters. I wouldn’t have bought the Mr Beam if I’d know how limited a 1W laser was going to be tbh.
yeah i was expecting $300 including their shield thing.
more of it? but i mean functionally it lets you do all of those things more quickly more than anything else.
also mostly it’s something i already have.
Ah, so it’s not like you get boat loads more cutting power and selection of materials? It’s mainly a speed thing. K, interesting.
Having said that, it is a sweet piece of industrial design. It looks cool and I do like the fact you can plonk it down on anything and blast away.
well i can’t tell you what the difference in materials might be because i don’t know what a very low wattage laser can do. i feel like it might mean the difference between sticking to paper or cardboard and getting to do balsa or potentially mdf. i’d be surprised if it could handle ply, though.
the speed thing is the biggest obvious difference to me, though, simply because you could run it correspondingly faster while transferring the same energy as a lower wattage diode moving at the same speed.
From their Kickstarter page…
- Preview and align. This convenient feature will be described later.
Ahem.
Ah yes, a laser strapped to a gopro tripod. What could go wrong.
I’d honestly just buy a cheap banggood laser engraver over this. At least with those it takes some effort to point it at your face.
Edit: Jesus CHRIST did they seriously imply you could or should be doing a vertical engrave just casually on the patio of your local coffee place?
Not yet… the tripod is an as-yet-unreached stretch goal.
i mean, it’s like you’ve never even considered the fact that some of us have a need for on-demand macaron engraving. open your eyes, man.
That pancake would probably taste terrible.
I feel uncomfortable having them open in the vicinity of that kickstarter video tbh.
on the other hand i bet people would give it a wider berth in re safety because “ooh laser cutter,” vs those tools that get high-powered laser pointers and do stupid things.
This definitely looks tempting but I’m skeptical on the release date of November this year. I like the idea though! It opens up ideas to a lot of applications. 
Very clever concept. Just too expensive. But that opinion seems to be a minority one considering the Kickstarter sales. Wow.
Yeah I saw this on FB…you will probably not get near the results shown…lol
“Do not look at Cubiio with remaining eye.”
Yep I trust the laser lady.
it’s neat but I’m not going to drop $300 or more on it. I think the mobility and compact size is awesome but it’s not a need and probably won’t bring me much business.
EDIT: by the way this is already being discussed here: