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This laser-engraving machine is as small as your printer and is just as easy to use too!

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It’s pretty difficult to comprehend that this small gadget possesses the power to cut and engrave practically any material from leather to wood, glass, acrylic, metal, fabric, stone, and even cement… but once you realize how versatile the beamo by FLUX is, the possibilities are endless. The beamo is a small but powerful laser cutting tool with industrial-grade capabilities and domestic-grade interface and price tag. Designed to make laser cutting as easy as 3D printing has become, beamo’s consumer-friendly design and UI brings laser cutting to the masses, letting you do everything from customizing products you own and adding artwork to things you design to even creating intricate laser-cut packaging for them.

Practically the size of your inkjet printer, beamo comes with everything you need to get started right away. The device packs a powerful 30W CO2 laser inside its fully-enclosed body. beamo’s on-board screen interface makes it easy to select what job you want to execute, while its compatibility with existing softwares like Photoshop and Illustrator, and its own intuitive softwares, the Beam Studio and BeamCam, let you easily turn your artworks into vector guidelines for laser cutting or etching.

beamo delivers on a pretty big promise by making laser cutting “easy”. It packs a live-preview feature that lets you preview your print and alignment before executing the job. The entire beamo, as small as it is, is incredibly safe, with a door-sensor that stops the laser when you open the enclosure, and a water-cooled system that keeps the printer running for long without overheating. By making laser-cutting as easy as laserjet printing, beamo helps democratize yet another industrial process that creatives heavily rely on. Whether it’s building 2D or even 3D structures, or customizing products with bespoke artworks, it helps to know that there’s a product out there that’s small, powerful, and affordable too!

Designer: FLUX

Click Here to Buy Now: $849 $1499 ($650 Off!). Hurry, less than 48 hours left! Raised over $400,000.

Bring ideas to life with beamo, the small, simple and affordable industrial-grade laser cutter that gives you the power to make something you’ll love.

Powerful Cutting

Equipped with a 30W CO2 laser, beamo easily cuts through tons of materials, leaving clean, precise cutting edges.

Detailed Engraving

Engrave detailed patterns, intricate text, and beautiful images for gifts, home decor, or just for fun.

High Resolution

Narrower than the width of a human hair, beamo’s laser engraves with 0.05mm layer spacing. The high 1,000 DPI resolution will amaze you.

Works With Hundreds of Materials

Explore new creative possibilities with hundreds of materials. Shape, cut, and engrave on a wide range of materials including wood, leather, acrylic, fabric, cardboard, stainless steel, anodized metal, glass, cement, and much more. beamo works on almost anything you can think of.

Transform Ideas into Reality

Bring your ideas to life with beamo and make personalized gifts for your loved ones, beautiful home decors, or transform your designs into a successful business. Our online community provides an enormous range of inspirations and resources to help you make amazing things.

Ultra Portable

Now, this is a game-changer: while conventional laser cutters are bulky and heavy, beamo has the same footprint as four letter-sized sheets of paper and weighs less than 50 pounds (22 kilos). Its super portability makes it a perfect fit for your home, office, design studio, classroom, makerspace, or even the back of your car.

Powerful Software

Their powerful software, Beam Studio, helps you create without limits. FLUX has included many features common to professional graphics editing apps, providing a one-stop design experience. Edit text and vector files, modify bitmap images, align and layout objects, and use many other tools to bring your imagination to life.

At the same time, Beam Studio’s compatibility with JPG / PNG / SVG / DXF file formats makes it easy to just use the graphics editor that’s best for you — Adobe Illustrator, Autocad, Inkscape, CorelDraw, or even Microsoft Word or Powerpoint.

Live Camera Preview

Use the onboard HD camera to preview the work area and workpiece live on your laptop or phone. Just place your design exactly where you want, and get exactly what you expect. It’s WYSIWYG for laser engraving.

BeamCam and Smart Trace

Use the mobile app BeamCam, for an even easier creative process. Just take a picture, upload it using your phone, align the design, then let beamo do the rest.

Prefer drawing by hand? Easily transform your sketches into digital files by using our Smart Trace software. Smart Trace is also perfect for kids or students who love to draw or paint. Inspire them by engraving their work onto hundreds of objects.

Easy Connection

beamo uses Wi-Fi for quick setup, file transfer, and status monitoring. beamo also connects over Ethernet and via smartphone hotspot. No matter where you are, beamo is always available.

Rotary Add-on

Unlock beamo’s 3D potential with the rotary add-on, which allows you to engrave on curved objects like glassware and bottles by spinning the workpiece. This add-on also extends the maximum material height from 45mm to 105mm. This easy-to-setup module opens up a whole new set of creative possibilities.

Autofocus

This add-on adjusts the focus according to the thickness of the material, enabling beamo to cut deeper in multiple passes. For example, the autofocus add-on enables beamo to cut 6 – 7mm wood in two passes, whereas normally beamo cuts up to 5mm in 2 passes.

Hybrid Laser

Most laser cutters on the market use either CO2 or semiconductor lasers. CO2 lasers cut and engrave at faster speeds, while semiconductor lasers have a longer lifespan and can engrave on stainless steel without coating. So, why not have both? Our hybrid laser module attaches a semiconductor laser to the existing CO2 laser so you can enjoy the benefits of both. This module is currently under development, we will share more information in future updates.

Air Assist

beamo has a built-in air assist system that channels air through the laser head directly onto the material to prevent the workpiece from catching fire.

Water Cooling

While most laser cutters require external cooling, beamo features an integrated water cooling system, making it a truly compact machine. This closed-loop water cooling system circulates throughout the machine, keeping all components at the proper temperature.

Ventilation System

The ventilation system takes in clean air to circulate around the chamber. beamo comes equipped with a powerful but quiet 340CMH (200CFM) fan and a 4.7″ (12 cm) diameter hose to extract smoke and fumes through a window or vent.

Safety Door Sensor

The fully enclosed chamber prevents the laser beam from leaking out. Lifting the door during a task sets off a safety sensor that automatically pauses beamo. These safety mechanisms ensure that you’re well protected.

Click Here to Buy Now: $849 $1499 ($650 Off!). Hurry, less than 48 hours left! Raised over $400,000.

FLUX Beamo Review: An Easy and Compact CO2 Laser Cutter/Engraver

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Ever since I saw a CO2 laser cutter in action at a maker space I visited, I always wanted to have one for my own workshop. The ability to cleanly cut and engrave materials with laser precision has all kinds of uses, from cutting out flat-pack models and puzzles, to adding logos and personalization to objects. But most of the more capable CO2 laser cutters on the market are expensive, difficult to use, and take up a lot of space.

The folks at FLUX aim to change that with their Beamo, a laser cutter/engraver that’s small enough to fit on a desktop, yet is powerful and versatile enough for pro-quality work. It’s also well-priced, with early bird orders on Kickstarter going for as little as $849. FLUX has a strong track record with its crowdfunded projects, having previously delivered on its well-rated Delta+ 3D printer.

Measuring in at 24.21″ (w) x 17.52″ (d) x 6.97″ (h), and weighing 48.5 pounds, the Beamo is equipped with a 30-watt CO2 laser, which basically zaps high voltage across a glass tube filled with CO2 gas, producing a powerful beam from the end of its tube. The beam is then reflected using mirrors, and crisply focused using a lens, which narrows the beam down to about 0.2mm. The Beamo’s resolution is roughly 1000 dpi, and it can engrave at speeds up to 300 mm per second.

I was fortunate enough to get my hands on a pre-production Beamo, and I have to say that I’m very impressed. It took no time to get it set up and connected to my network, and within 10 minutes of opening the box, I had my first completed piece. Everything comes pre-assembled in the box – all you need to do is connect the Wi-Fi antenna (or an Ethernet cable), attach the vent hose to the back of the printer, and plug it in. You’ll definitely want to run that vent hose to a window, as it’s important to keep the fumes in your space to a minimum.

The Beamo can engrave a variety of different materials, including wood, cardboard, fabric, glass, acrylic, leather, stone, tile, and more. Cutting is limited to cardboard, paper, wood, acrylic, and other similar lightweight materials, with maximum thicknesses between 3mm and 5mm. There’s enough room inside the machine to handle objects up to 11.81″ by 8.27″ (300 x 210 mm), and as tall as 1.77″ (45 mm.)

Preparing for a cutting or engraving job is as simple as placing your object on the ventilated surface, flipping down the plastic calibration clip on the head unit, then loosening the knurled knob on the laser head and adjusting it to the height of the object. This ensures a sharp beam focus. This manual adjustment process is easy and takes only a couple of seconds, though buyers can opt for an autofocus module, which also enables slightly deeper cuts in woods (up to 7mm.) That tool is currently bundled with a rotary module, which allows for engraving on curved surfaces, such as drinking glasses.

Working with the Beamo Studio desktop application is quite easy. It works on both Mac OS and Windows (I used the Mac version), and provides an intuitive interface for setting up your artwork. Since the Beamo has a built-in camera, you first use the Camera tool to preview your work piece, then you can start arranging your digital cutting files. The app works with SVG and DXF vector files, as well as JPG and PNG bitmap art. Vector files generally produce sharper images, but with a high enough resolution bitmap, the Beamo does just fine too.

The software comes with presets for a variety of materials and job types, and you can create multi-layered jobs with different settings. For instance, you could import one layer with sharp vector lines, another layer with a bitmap shading, and yet another layer, and set it to cut an outline. This way you can create complicated objects in a single pass. FLUX also plans on releasing a mobile app which will allow users to snap photos, place them using the Beamo’s camera, then send them for output, but it hasn’t been released for review as of yet.

 

The Beamo made quick and precise work of the wood, paper, mirrored glass, and leather that I tested with, though the irregularities of leather cause some blurring that you don’t get in flatter and smoother materials like wood. For materials not listed, you might have to experiment on some scrap to get the power, speed, and repetition settings right. Be sure to avoid using certain plastics, foams, and adhesives with a laser cutter, as it can create toxic fumes or damage the machine.  Render times can vary dramatically depending on the material and complexity of job you’re outputting. Smaller jobs can take as little as a minute, while the most complex images I tested with took 20 minutes or so.

I cannot recommend the FLUX Beamo highly enough. It brings the power of CO2 laser cutting and engraving down to a size and price that many more people can afford, and unlike some crowdfunding projects, the hardware and software is ready for primetime. The Kickstarter campaign for the Beamo is running through Saturday, November 30, 2019 at 11:00 am Central Time, so if you want to get in on one of the earlier units and pre-release pricing as low as $849, now is the time.

For those looking for a larger work area, FLUX is also readying the Beambox, which can work with objects as large as 15.7″ x 14.7″, and cuts material up to 10mm thick. That model is quite a bit more expensive, though, with prices starting at $2499.

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A flute with Gesture-Control!

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flux_flute_1

Any musician worth their salt will tell you that while electronic instruments offer a larger degree of control, they feel impersonal. A lot gets lost in converting electrical signals into audio, and this lack of expressiveness is what makes them sound robotic.

Flux, however, brings gesture control to the electronic instrument, allowing musicians to add their own personal touches and imperfections that help make the music sound natural. Made out of wood to give the instrument a natural feel, the Flux comes with buttons and a capacitive touch surface that records everything from the position of your fingers, to the angle, to even gestures, making sure the electronic audio signal captures as many details as possible. Designed to embody the aesthetic of high-end music equipment, the Flux lets you be as expressive as you would with an acoustic instrument while retaining full electronic control!

The FLUX is a winner of the Red Dot Design Concept Award for the year 2017.

Designer: Andrea-Alexandra Radulescu for ENSCI

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SteelSeries Flux and Flux In-Ear Pro headsets ears-on (video)

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SteelSeries Flux and Flux InEar Pro headsets handson

"This is the best sounding in-ear product below $250," SteelSeries' Chief Marketing Officer, Kim Rom, told us between songs. "I'll go on record saying that." Rom was talking about the firm's new Flux In-Ear Pro headset, and had similar words for the brand's foldable on-ear Flux cans. The earbuds and their full sized companions are part of the company's "freedom to play" campaign, and it has the utmost confidence in them. Rom even told us the foldable Flux headset lasted 90 minutes in the firm's "soccer test," a SteelSeries tradition that plays out exactly like it sounds: international football with consumer electronics. Our hands-on was decidedly less rough.

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