Need a hobby to get through the never-ending pandemic? Do you currently run a successful e-commerce site that allows for personalization? You probably could (if you wanted to) transport most desktop laser engravers from A to B. Home to office and vice-versa is pretty doable with a bit of effort, but not many engravers are totally portable as you’ll need a power socket for them to do the pew-pew. Enter stage right, the LaserPecker 2, a modestly sized, battery-powered laser engraver whose creator claims can work for up to 200 minutes without a mains supply.
That means it’s entirely portable, meaning you can get out and about and laser stuff to your heart’s content. Out for a walk? Engrave something. At a wedding? Engrave something. Off to the gym? You get the idea.
The LaserPecker 2 packs a 5 W diode laser into its little frame and is said to engrave at speeds of up to 600 mm per second. It looks like a very exciting product, and as it’s backable on Kickstarter right now, we’ve put together what you ought to know about it.
Obviously one of the main strengths of the LaserPecker2 is the ability to just engrave stuff wherever you happen to be. If you need to pop out to engrave something, you can. Just make sure you’re in a ventilated space when you do so, and remember not to look at the laser, of course.
The LaserPecker also incorporates a little handle into its design, meaning you can hold it against something to engrave too, so you’re not just limited to what’ll go underneath it on a desk. Possibilities, possibilities.
IMPROVED SPEED
LaserPecker’s kickstarter page for the LaserPecker 2 states that the new machine is around 10 times quicker than the first generation, meaning you can get stuff engraved much quicker than you could previously. At top engraving speed it’ll do you 600 mm every second, which isn’t bad at all.
MATERIAL VARIETY
At 5 W and battery-powered, this really isn’t a very powerful laser at all. Nevertheless, its Kickstarter page initially says that the LaserPecker 2 can engrave on metal, dark glass, colored ceramics, wood, bamboo, leather, paper, food (yes, it’s food safe), plastic, acrylic, stone, cement, bone, and more.
LASER STRENGTH
It’s pretty difficult to pack a powerful laser into a compact, battery-powered body. The LaserPecker 2 has a 5 W laser, so you won’t be engraving anything too strong or too thick with this, but you should be able to do some nifty stuff with softer, thinner materials. All of which leads us onto…
Read further down that page and you’ll see materials clarified in a table, where it’s specified the LaserPecker 2 can only engrave certain coatings on these materials, which sounds realistic, given the lasers’ power. It is, really, a different kettle of fish. Be aware that what marketing campaigns and YouTubers tell you upfront can be a distortion of the truth.
When it comes to cutting, LaserPecker says you should be able to get through wood, paper, acrylic, and leather goods with a thickness below 5mm.
BATTERY LIFE
On a full charge, the LaserPecker 2 is said to last a nice even 200 minutes, which is great if so, as you won’t really have to worry about running out of power if you’re engraving away from your office or whatever you might call your usual engraving place. Chamber of Engravement?
ENGRAVING DIFFICULT SHAPES
Good news on this front, because the LaserPecker 2 will come with a roller device that allows you to engrave cylindrical objects. Longer objects can also be engraved courtesy of an “auxiliary extender”, that’ll roll the engraver down the length of a flat, horizontal surface up to 2,000 mm. These items can only currently be obtained from certain pledge levels.
Release Date & Availability
Currently, the Kickstarter campaign says that shipping will begin in March 2021. A little over a year ago, LaserPecker ran a successful Kickstarter campaign for its first product, the LaserPecker Pro. Leafing through that campaign’s comments page shows some backers still waiting for their rewards, a year on from the estimated delivery. In addition to the Kickstarter campaign, the LaserPecker Pro could also be backed on Indiegogo, with these two platforms raising a combined $2.4-million for the company.
The LaserPecker 2 campaign has raised, at the time of writing, $4.6-million and is being run only through Kickstarter this time. The target was just a lowly $8,286, which you would assume the company could have found from the $2.4-million it raised before. The signs point to it being a project riding Kickstarter as a marketing tool, rather than through any genuine need to crowdfund the idea to bring it to market.
Price
Varying pledge levels are present, of course, but you can back this project from as little as $599, with $799 and $899 priced pledges also currently available at the time of writing.
At the $799 price point, the LaserPecker 2 on offer is augmented by the auxiliary extender, which allows you to work on pieces up to 2000 mm in length. At $899, the company is offering a bundled power bank and materials pack.
According to the Kickstarter page, these prices are a sizeable discount. Even with the discounts, this machine is still considerably more expensive than laser engravers of a similar, if not greater power than the LaserPecker 2, although they’re not as portable.
Tech Specs
GENERAL
- Year: 2021
- Assembly: Fully assembled
- Manufacturer: LaserPecker
- Country: China
LASER ENGRAVING SPECIFICATIONS
- Work area: 100 x 100 mm (100 x 2000 mm with extender)
- Work area depth: N/A
- Borderless work area: N/A
- Laser Type: Diode
- Cutting thickness: 5 mm
- Max. moving Speed: 600 mm/s
- Max. material height: N/A
- UI: N/A
- Camera: No
MATERIALS
- Cutting and Engraving: metal, dark glass, colored ceramics, wood, bamboo, leather, paper, food, plastic, acrylic, stone, cement, bone, and more.
- Engraving Only: wood, paper, acrylic and leather
SOFTWARE
- Recommended control software: LaserPecker smartphone app
- Operating system: Android, iOS, Windows, Mac OS
- File types: JPG, SVG, PNG, BMP, G-code and more.
- Connectivity: Bluetooth
DIMENSIONS AND WEIGHT
- Frame dimensions: 162.5 x 60 x 122 mm
- Weight: 2.2–3.6 kg
- Box size: N/A
- Box weight: N/A
