trust · transparency
About Laser Tinkerer
Laser Tinkerer is a structured reference site for owners of home diode laser engravers — focused on the $100–$800 desktop machines from xTool, Sculpfun, Ortur, and Atomstack. Every settings number carries a source. Every number is a starting point, not a guarantee.
After someone buys a diode laser, they typically spend hours hunting Reddit threads, Facebook groups, and YouTube comment sections to answer one specific question: "what settings do I use for 3mm basswood?" or "will my 10W machine cut 6mm acrylic?" The answers are scattered, poorly attributed, and rarely tell you whether the person who posted them was using the same machine, the same material, or even the same software.
Laser Tinkerer exists to aggregate and structure those answers in one place — with source attribution, confidence labels, machine-wattage normalization, and honest uncertainty. Every settings table shows where the numbers came from.
The site covers machines in the $100–$800 class: desktop diode laser engravers and cutters (450–455 nm blue-wavelength diode modules). It does not cover CO2 lasers, fiber lasers, or industrial machines — they work on fundamentally different physics.
What We Cover
- Settings Database — speed, power, and pass settings for common materials, organized by machine wattage and sourced from manufacturer documentation, community results, and wattage-normalized derivation.
- Test-Grid Generator — the only free firmware-aware tool for generating power/speed test grids calibrated to your machine. Downloads SVG and GRBL G-code.
- Normalization Report — the Laser Tinkerer Energy Index: the named cross-machine normalization method that powers every derived setting on the site.
- Can-I-Laser — capability verdicts answering the most-misunderstood questions about what diode lasers can and cannot do.
- Safety Reference — the materials you must never put in a laser, why, and how to set up adequate ventilation for home use.
How Settings Are Sourced
We do not have a warehouse of laser machines. We cannot personally test every machine-material-thickness combination. Being honest about that is a feature, not a bug — it means we don't fabricate numbers we can't verify.
We use a four-tier sourcing model described in detail on the Methodology page:
- Manufacturer official — settings published directly by xTool, Sculpfun, Ortur, Atomstack. Highest reliability.
- LightBurn material library — community-vetted settings where accessible via public pages.
- Derived-scaled — calculated from a verified anchor using the Laser Tinkerer Energy Index. Always labelled as "calculated starting points" and visibly tagged in every table cell.
- Community-verified — specific, named, linked results from community members. We quote and link — we never silently average forum threads.
Every row in every settings table carries a source type, a source reference link, and a last-verified date.
Honest Limitations
Settings are starting points. Your results will vary based on:
- Material batch, brand, moisture content, and surface treatment
- Lens condition and focus accuracy (1 mm of focus error can meaningfully change cutting depth)
- Air assist presence, flow rate, and nozzle position
- Ambient temperature and humidity
- Machine wear, mirror alignment, and lens cleanliness
Always run a test grid on scrap from the same batch before committing to a final piece. The Material Test Grid Generator makes this easy.
how to use this site
Find the row for your machine wattage and material, start there, run a test grid, and dial from there. The settings are tighter than random forum guesses but looser than "run this exactly."
Production Method & AI Disclosure
This site is produced with AI assistance. The data sourcing pipeline, wattage normalization model, and page generation are partially automated. Every data point is tagged with its origin; the normalization method is documented in the Methodology; no numbers are fabricated or invented.
AI-assisted production is not a shortcut around accuracy — it is how we maintain consistent attribution, formatting, and structure across a large database. The quality gate is that every published number must have a traceable, real source.
Affiliate Disclosure
Some links on this site are Amazon Associates links. When you buy a product through these links, we earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. This does not affect which products we recommend or what settings we publish — affiliate links appear only on genuinely useful products (basswood, safety glasses, air-assist pumps, marking spray).
Contact
If you spot an error, have a verified community result to share, or want to flag a safety issue, the best route is to open an issue in the public GitHub repository. We review corrections and add sourced community data to the settings database.