Ortur Laser Master 3 20 watt edition – Overview and Engraving Performance

Have you ever thought about incorporating a laser into your pyrography business?  Or maybe you have thought that a laser would be fun to use; a quick way to make gifts and home décor.   I know I have, but I’ve never taken the plunge and bought one.  Recently, Ortur contacted me and asked if I would be interested in trying out their Laser Master 3 20 w edition.  I was very interested, and in this blog I will share what I’ve discovered about the laser.

Before I get going, I need to mention that I did not buy the laser.  It was given to me with the stipulation that I create a video review.  As part of that agreement I had 30 days from receipt of laser to create said video.   

If you’ve watched one of my product review videos, then you know I tend to be thorough.  The video I did on the laser is no exception.   I wanted to keep this blog fairly short, so I left out a number of items like the unboxing, pros & cons, and other things.  This blog will cover the highlights, and if you’re interested in more information, you can watch the video.  

Speaking of videos, click on the image to the left to watch the YouTube video I created.

The laser arrives in a box, and the packaging is superb.  Everything is snug and safe.  The downside is that you end up with a lot of packaging that must be tossed out.  

The laser requires assembly, but it’s pretty easy to do.  I had it done in under 45 minutes.   I was timing how long it took me to put it together, but I got up to run an errand and forgot to turn off the timer.  Oops.

The laser master 3 comes standard with an air assist.  This is nothing more than an air pump or low-pressure air compressor. 

One thing I really like about the air assist is the anti-vibration feet.  It wiggles and jiggles, but doesn’t make the table it’s sitting on vibrate.   This is a feature I can’t show well on a blog.  🙂

Another nice thing is that the laser comes with safety goggles.  The goggles are large enough to easily and comfortably, fit over glasses.

Also included are engraving and cutting manuals that are program specific.  So there is a manual for LaserGrbl and another for Lightburn.  When you’re new to the laser realm as I am, these are extremely helpful.  An important thing to remember is that they are guidelines.  During my engraving experiments, I found other settings that I felt worked better for my artwork.

Speaking of programs, you need to use an app or a computer-based program to run the laser. 

Ortur has a free app, but as I don’t own a cellphone, I couldn’t use it.

Here’s a link to Ortur’s website:  https://ortur.net

Lightburn is a computer-based program.  It has a free 30-day trial, and after that you have to buy the program.  At the time I wrote this blog, the cost was $60. 

Here’s a link to Lightburn’s website: https://lightburnsoftware.com

LaserGrbl is the other computer-based program that is compatible with Ortur’s laser.  This program is free.

Here’s a link to LaserGrbl’s website:  https://lasergrbl.com/

Per Ortur’s website, the laser comes with a number of safety features.  The font weight on parts of their website is terrible, so let me recap the features:  Emergency shut off button, safety lock, program operation watchdog, time limit, USB connection monitor, tilt monitor detection, voltage & current safety control system.

Most of the safety features I do not know how to test for, but the emergency shut off is easy.   The emergency shut off button is the big red button on the far right.  Just press it and the laser immediately shuts down.  I do mean immediately! 

The image to the left shows the laser ready for use.  The emergency button is not engaged, the key is in the lock, so the power button is green. 

In this composite photo, I’m showing the laser without the key.   In the top image I’m pressing the power button.   

The middle image shows the power button flashing red. 

The lower images shows that the laser shut off.   

This is a great feature especially if you have kids.  The key can be stored away from the laser when you’re not using it to prevent them anyone else turning on the laser. 

I did shake the laser, but nothing happened. I should clarify, that the laser kept running.  The piece of wood that I was engraving was aligned as it was, so the engraving got messed up. 

I will mention that I kept the laser flat on the floor as I did this.

Next, I lifted one side of the laser up from the floor.

That tilting motion made the laser shut off very quickly.

Per Ortur’s website, the laser has the following specs:  It is a diode laser, has a focal point of 0.08 x 0.08 mm, has a 20-watt maximum laser capacity, uses Spatial compression, has a working area of 15 ¾ x 15 inches (400 x 380 mm), has a maximum engraving speed of 20,000 per mm, and the diodes have an estimated life of 8,000-10,000 hours.   

There were more items listed, but the items I recapped where the ones I thought were interesting.

I raised the laser module as high as it would safely go.  Then I measured the distance from the ground to the bottom of the laser module.  The measurement was 1 1/2 inches (3.81 cm).

The laser has a focusing foot, and the length of the foot is 1/4 inch (0.64 cm). 

This needs to be deducted from the previous measurement.  Giving a working area of 1 1/4 inches (3.2 cm).  

If the material you are working with is thicker than 1.25 inches, then the laser frame needs to be raised.  Ortur sells a couple different style of feet that can be attached to the laser to raise it up. 

I have seen videos of people using blocks of wood, cardboard boxes, books, etc., to raise the frame of the laser.

The laser has 3 major controls that influence how the engraving looks: Lines per mm, engraving speed, and power level.

This test panel shows how the lines per mm impact an engraving.  I keep the power and engraving speed constant, but as the number of lines increased so did the darkness of the engraving. 

With this particular material, I didn’t notice much of a color difference once the lines per mm got to 10.  About the only easily noticeable difference was the amount of overburn or discoloration of the wood adjacent to the engraving increased.   

Oh, I should explain lines 16 and 17.  I forgot to move the laser module, so when I engraved using 17 lines per mm it engraved over the top of 16.  Oops. 

This test panel shows the correlation between the lines per mm and the power setting. 

The first horizontal column shows the lines per mm; I only went to 8. 

The Top row shows the power level. I started at 10% power and increased the power my increments of 10 until I reached the maximum power. 

As you can see, as the number of lines increases so does the color of the engraving.   As the power increases, so the color of the engraving.   The bottom row of 8 lines per mm was showing a lot of overburn, so that one of the main reasons I stopped where I did. 

I used a kneadable eraser and pressed it down into the lower rows on the test panel.  Some of the test squares got engraved very deeply into the wood surface. 

I was using a piece of thin plywood, and I think the last few squares were pretty close to cutting a hole into the wood.

My last test panel demonstrates the impact of the engraving speed. 

I kept the lines per mm and power constant, and increased the engraving speed by increments of 1,000 until I reached the maximum of 20,000.

Between the 3 laser controls and the image controls available on the program, you can spend a considerable amount of time trying out different setting to get the “perfect” engraving.   At least I can.  

ENGRAVING PERFORMANCE TESTS

One of the things I thought the laser would be helpful for was engraving pattern lines onto a board.  Some patterns are fairly complex, so it takes a bit of time to trace all of the lines onto the board.   The laser had it done in mere minutes, and it turned out great. 

I can easily see the lines, so have no problem there.  Plus, the lines are so shallow that they blend into the pyrography.   I do mean the lines are shallow.  I couldn’t hardly feel them.

Something that I thought would be extremely handy to do was reproduce artwork.  I tried a number of different photos of my artwork, and I discovered that lighting makes a HUGE difference.  I often take photos of the artwork while it’s sitting on my easel, so the artwork is lit from above.   This caused the engraving to be super light at the top, and dark at the bottom. 

Make sure your artwork is uniformly lit when taking photos!

My chipmunk artwork was one that had uniform lighting, so I used it to test out different mediums for engraving. 

First up I engraving the artwork onto a piece of basswood.  It turned out okay.   I might be able to get better results with different laser settings.  

I do want to point out that no one is going to mistake a laser engraving for a handcrafted piece of pyrography artwork.   The laser engraving doesn’t capture the tonal depth of the original.  Again, that might be I need to use different engraving settings that what I used.

Here’s a photo of the original artwork, so you can really compare the difference between a handcrafted burn and a laser engraved reproduction.

Next, I tried plywood. 

The basswood turned out better. 

As I mentioned before,  there are a number of factors that go into an engraving.  I spent a considerable amount of time trying out different combinations of settings.   

One thing I find a bit odd is how the wood grain pattern is a lot more noticeable with engravings than it is with pyrography.   I’m not sure why that is.

In fact, the engraving can be hard to see if it’s viewed at the wrong angle.   This photo shows a number of test engravings I did of my Misty Marina artwork.  

Compare the previous photo with this one and notice how much darker the images are.   It’s the same board, but I rotated it, and that was all it took for the engravings to look darker and so much easier to see.  

This is something I don’t notice with pyrography artwork.

Then I tried engraving on 100% cotton, 140 pound (300 gsm) watercolor paper.  Again, this turned out okay, but not great.  

It is at this point I should mention that I am extremely picky.  If I’m going to reproduce my artwork, I want it to be the best I can make it.  I’m willing to try different settings until I get something I happy with.  

As I mentioned before, I was on a time limit with the laser, so I had to settle with good enough…for now. 🙂

The last material I tried reproducing my artwork onto was leather.  This turned out fantastically!  It might even look better than the original.

If fact, I was so impressed with the results that I’m not sure if I will ever hand-burn leather again.  

Leather can be difficult to burn on, and I’ve never been truly happy with anything I’ve attempted.  I think using the laser to engrave my artwork onto leather might be a great solution.

Ortur was kind enough to send me their engraving samples kit.  This had some expected and unexpected items in it.  Expected items were pieces of plywood.  Unexpected were the laser engraving paper.    The engraving paper took me quit a bit of research to discover how it was used.

Some items, like the metal and acrylic pieces, I don’t have a set up that I feel is safe enough to engrave on them.   

The laser is no different that your pyrography burner in that regard, dangerous fumes can be emitted!   Make sure you use the laser in an EXTREMELY well ventilated area!

Here’s a photo of the laser engraving paper.  A piece of it is cut out, and soaked in water.  The black material comes free of the backer.  Apply the material to ceramics or glass, and engrave.  Soak again to remove the excess paper.   This is demonstrated in my video review.

Here’s an example of my engraving results on ceramic tiles.  I bought the tiles at a home improvement store, so they are standard white glossy tiles.  There is a reason one of the images is darker than the other.  That’s because I applied color to the paler engraving before using the paper.   It was an experiment that didn’t work out!   Again, this is shown in the video.

The samples kit included 10 sheets of scratch art paper, and I engraved my dragonfly pattern onto one of them.  I was impressed with the amount of detail the laser could engrave.  I wasn’t sure it could handle all of the tiny vein lines in the wings.   

This was my first attempt at engraving the dragonfly onto the scratch paper.  Notice how subdued the coloring is when compared to the first engraving.  The difference is the power level.  The first engraving was done with 15% power and this one 30%.   That was enough to engrave most of the color off of the paper.

I an still working on getting the right combination of settings to get a good engraving of my  Misty Marina artwork.  While I haven’t discovered them yet, I was really impressed with the amount of detail it captured.  This engraving is only 2×4 inches (5.1×10.2 cm), and it’s amazing the things that were reproduced.

Another useful function of the laser was creating a test panel. 

I’ve been planning on doing a color test for almost a year.  My plan is to color each butterfly with a different coloring medium and compare the results.  

I never went beyond the planning stage because I was dreading the fact that I had to trace and burning in the design 16 times!   The laser created my test panel in 15 minutes, so that was a huge time saver.

OPERATIONAL COSTS

As of September 2023, Ortur’s laser costs $1,299.99 on Amazon.  There is a $300 off coupon, bringing the cost down to $999.99.    It is important to note that the air assist is includes with the laser master 3.

The rep at Ortur told me that the diodes in the laser module are estimate to last between 8,000 and 10,000 hours.   Let’s use the lowest quantity of 8,000 hours.

Divide 8,000 hours by the cost of the laser, results in a value of $0.12 per hour.

Per EngerySage, the average US electricity cost is $0.23 per kilowatt hour (kHw).

This means that if you run a 100-watt lightbulb for 10 hours straight, it will use 1 kHw of power and cost $0.23.  

That breaks down into an hourly rate of $0.023.

The laser uses 120 watts, so you get 8.3 hours of use per kHw.   This calculates out to a hourly rate of $0.027 

I do want to point out that Ortur’s website said the laser using 120 watts.  It also states that the laser module uses 80 watts.   I’m not sure if that means it uses 200 watts total, or that the laser modules uses 80 of the 120 watts.   To me it seemed unlikely that the laser would use more power than the module, so I’m making the assumption that the lasers uses a total of 120 watts.   

The air assist uses 25 watts, so you get 40 hours of use per kHw.  It costs $0.006 per hour to run.   

Add the costs together, and you get a total cost of $0.153 per hour.  That is very inexpensive. 

Keep in mind that the estimate cost I provided does not include all costs related to running the laser.    For example, you need either a phone or a computer to control the laser with.   That takes electricity and costs money too.   What is used to run the laser can vary a lot.  My goal with this section was to provide a generalized dollar amount to give you an idea of what it costs to use the laser.   

How long does it take to create an engraving?  Great question!

The chipmunk on plywood took 69 minutes to engrave.  That calculates out to a cost of $0.0175 plus the cost of the wood.

The engraving on basswood took 57 minutes, and cost $0.145 plus the cost of the wood.

The watercolor paper engraving took 37 minutes, and cost $0.094 plus the cost of the paper.

Lastly, the engraving on leather took 26 minutes.  This cost $0.066 plus the cost of the leather. 

Another thing not included in my cost estimates, are the test burns.  The leather only took me 2 test burns before I created the final engraving.   That was the exception versus the norm.  Most of my engravings took 5-15 test burns before I had a result I really liked.   Depending on the size of the test burn, it took anywhere from 4-10 minutes.

Another reason the leather only took a couple of test burn is that it was the last material I tested out.   By then I had done a lot of test engravings, so I had a better idea of what settings to start with.  

BUSINESS and/or PERSONAL APPLICATIONS

I don’t have photos for the following.  Instead it’s just a list of ideas that I think could be used for business purposes and/or gift giving.  The ideas are not in any particular order.

Reproduce your artwork and sell engraved copies.

You can laser engrave a client’s photo onto wood.  This would give them a cheaper option than what pyrography costs

Your artwork can be reproduced on a lot of different mediums.  Things like drink coasters, cotton tote bags, leather journal covers, etc.

Reproduce your artwork on watercolor paper, and add paint to give it extra flair and uniqueness. 

Create sets of greeting cards

Add cute sayings to engraved reproductions of artwork

Using the laser engraving paper to put logos on ceramic tiles, mugs, plates

ORTUR LASER LINKS:

Laser Master 3:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C5MKWXXC

*Laser Master 2:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BFW5CXKC

*The laser master 2 is on clearance, so it might be a good option if you want a laser but can’t afford the laser master 3.   I’m sure that once their stock is gone, the laser won’t be available anymore.

Please, do not feel pressured to purchase a laser.   That is not my goal.   The links are provided to make it easier for you to find the laser on Amazon.

Also, while I have provided links to the lasers, I do not receive any compensation whatsoever if you should purchase one.  The above links are not Amazon affiliate links.  Instead, they are links Ortur provided to me.   If you are not familiar with affiliate links, let me explain them. 

Basically, a person applies to become an Amazon Associate.  This gives the associate access to links to most products on Amazon.  If a viewer should purchase something using one of the links, then Amazon share a small percentage of the selling fees with the associate.  The money comes from Amazon, not the manufacturer of the product. 

IN CONCLUSION

The laser can be used for more than what I showed.  I had a limited time I was allowed for testing.  Considering that I have not used a laser before, I thought I was able to do a considerable amount with it in the short time I had it. 

I was extremely impressed with what the laser is capable of doing.  It captured and replicated minute detail even on small engravings.  It’s performance on leather was amazing!   If I were trying to run a pyrography business, I think the laser would be a fantastic asset. 

Brenda

Sept 12, 2023

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