Selection: Which One is Right for You?

Lasers

have a glass tube with CO2 in it and a plasma laser to produce finely focused light whose in sync with each other. The glass tube has water in it to keep it cool. CO2 lasers start at watts and go all the way up to thousands of industrial applications. Most home-based busiCO2 lasers in the 40W to 150W range.

common CO2 lasers are: Glowforge, Flux Beamo, GweikeCloud, Aeon, Full Spectrum, Thunder, OMTech many materials in one pass, available from desklarge sizes, faster engraving than diodes, wide prices ($500 to $15,000)

Rf Lasers

RF lasers are similar to CO2 lasers except that the laser is ignited by radio frequency waves that travel at the speed of light. In order to engrave at high speeds, the laser needs to be able to turn on and off at very high rates. Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, so RF tubes are a great way to increase your engrave speeds. The life of RF tubes is generally longer than CO2 tubes as well. Some lasers house both an RF and a glass CO2 tube.

Some companies that offer RF lasers are: GweikeCloud RF, Boss, Trotec, Thunder, Aeon, Epilog

Benefits: Very high engraving speeds, otherwise very similar to CO2 lasers

Drawbacks: More expensive than CO2 lasers ($4,000 to $20,000)

Drawbacks: is fragile; requires water cooling to remain temperature range; cannot mark metal without special