Pros
- Great smoke trapping and light filtering hood
- Powerful 60W laser cuts up to 20mm
- Internal camera means pinpoint placement of cuts on material
Cons
- Quite bulky
- Hood did leak a small amount, nothing terrible
Our Rating
8 / 10
Get Creality Falcon 2 Pro laser cutter/engraver
Having a laser cutter and engraver in the home could be the basis of a new side hustle or rewarding hobby. The new 60W version of the Creality Falcon 2 Pro is a fully-enclosed laser cutter with many added features.
This is a sponsored article and was made possible by Creality. The actual contents and opinions are the sole views of the author, who maintains editorial independence even when a post is sponsored.
Content
- Unboxing a Huge Box
- Setting Up the Laser Engraver
- Cutting and Engraving
- The Creality Experience
- My Test Project
- Availability
Unboxing a Huge Box
High-end laser cutters and engravers were formerly expensive items, as much as a budget quality hatchback. As technology advanced, they’ve become smaller and much more affordable and versatile. They’ve gone from high-end workshop tool to within sight of being a domestic hobbyist device.
The Creality Falcon 2 Pro Laser Cutter and Engraver package contains everything you will need:
- Laser cutter/engraver
- Rails to make a “honeycomb” base for cutting
- Air assist module
- 60W laser module
- Bonus 1.6W module
- Acrylic roll-top hood
There are some laser safety glasses, too, in case you feel you need extra protection.
Additionally, there is:
- Flexible pipe for venting smoke from the enclosure, which clips onto the exhaust
- Power brick
- 2 USB-C cables for data transfer
- Some sample materials
- Air assist module
This air assist module blows air down the path of the laser to clear detritus and make the cuts cleaner and less burned.
Also included is a bonus 1.6W laser module for detailed engraving work, as it has a slightly narrower, more refined laser.
There’s a toolkit with allen keys, wrenches and screws for assembly and maintenance, as well as a reasonably comprehensive instruction manual, a cleaning cloth, a pair of keys for the ON switch, and a TF card containing software, etc.
Setting Up the Laser Engraver
To finish the Creality Falcon 2 Pro, you need to build the curved side rails and camera parts for the lid, then slide in the transparent red laser shield.
It is quite difficult to slide the red acrylic screen into the rails in the lid. Sliding it into the slot is easy, but keeping it in there long enough to push it home into the end of the slot is very hard. Another fiddly and difficult job is slotting all the rods that make up the honeycomb (or suspended cutting surface). They should be inserted in every other slot.
You don’t have to use all the slots – only those that fall under your material. In fact, if you are cutting small parts that would fall between the slots, you can insert some rods sideways between the others. The side slots are flattened a little to allow this configuration.
The final step is to attach the laser module and tighten the screws. It doesn’t really matter which height, as you will manually focus the head for different materials, using a measuring block.
The limiting factor with assembly is the weight of the unit. The frame itself is quite heavy, but add the weight of the drawer (which is surprisingly weighty on its own) and the hood and the laser module, and it all adds up. It’s a little unwieldy and almost too much for a single person to lift.
Naturally, being substantially built is a good thing for a piece of workshop equipment, as it provides stability. But this is too big and heavy to be anything but a permanent fixture on your bench.
Cutting and Engraving
Using the Creality Falcon 2 Pro Laser is simple. Hook up the machine to your computer with two USB cables (supplied): one for data transfer to the laser module and another for talking to the internal camera.
The camera has a very specific purpose. If you place a piece of material on the bed, the camera sends an image to the software, enabling you to place cuts, or engraves, in the material visually. Before you can do this, the camera must be calibrated and aligned.
Luckily, the optional Lightburn software (paid license with 30-day trial) takes care of all this. It sounds complicated, but in practice, It goes quite smoothly. It has a wizard that prompts you to put a special card on the bed in different positions and capture a photo. Using this information, it flattens out the image and places it precisely in the space on the bed.
Tip: the camera couldn’t clearly see the dots on the test image because of a shadow, so I used the light on my phone to illuminate it so that the camera could get a fix on it.
To cut or engrave on a piece of material, place it on the bed, draw or load the images you wish to use, and select whether these graphic lines are to be cut or engraved and at what speed or power. The combination of speed and power are crucial to the type of mark you get.
It’s helpful before you use it to run a test image with a matrix of lines at a variety of speeds and powers. This enables you to home in on the right settings for your laser. The settings from the maker are only suggestions, and I urge you to test and find which ones are right for you.
The Creality Experience
So what’s it like? In the plus column, the Creality Falcon 2 Pro Laser is very powerful: it cuts up to 20mm thick basswood in one pass. That’s quite something.
I was also impressed with the utility of the enclosure. It funnels the smoke nicely up the pipe through the fan. After a lot of use, there was hardly any smoke aroma in the room, except inside the enclosure. I also really liked the tray under the honeycomb that collects bits of cut material for easy gathering and disposal.
Once you get it up and running, the camera makes it very easy to just throw a piece of wood on the bed, focus, frame it (to check that the laser has the right idea where to cut), press play, and put your glasses on.
I love the build quality of the Creality Falcon 2 Pro Laser: it’s very solid, almost bulletproof. The lid slides open very smoothly, and it even has little magnets in the lip that tell the unit whether the lid is open or closed, for safety reasons.
The first of the very few downsides is that you have to plug it into a computer to use the full functionality. You can save the job as G-CODE on a TF card and run it standalone, but that’s not ideal.
Secondly, while very good, the seal on the enclosure is not perfect – I did get a small leak.
It’s also bulky. In fact, the thing is too big and heavy to be a temporary resident on any bench. If you absolutely have to store it off the bench, you need to unscrew the hood, detach the cables, and take out all the honeycomb rods and drawer to store it on its side someplace. It’s far better to set it up and leave it.
It’s powerful and enclosed, so it doesn’t fill the room with smoke and can totally be used in a domestic environment. Using the internal camera, it can position a cut on a piece of material with pinpoint accuracy. Being able to use materials without waste is a very conscientious and eco-friendly feature.
Also, I love that you can easily switch between three different powers with the Power button, toggling 22W/40W/60W. This means you have a greater flexibility of mark-making and materials than single power lasers. This is a pro piece of equipment.
My Test Project
To test this out, I thought I’d make something I’ve made before for the grandkids. I cut their name out and make the letters into fridge magnets. Placement of the letters on the material was easy using the camera.
The pieces come out super clean, with the air assist making it less scorched.
That’s not so much of an issue this time, as I’m going to paint them.
It’s fiddly getting them all on a stick, but I laid down some double-sided tape to keep them steady while I hit them with two to three coats of from acrylic paint pens.
I only needed to glue on some cheap flat magnets on the back! Charlie says I should varnish the letters, too.
Availability
Apply the code FNPALL10 to get nearly nearly 15% off the price of the Creality Falcon 2 Pro Laser Cutter and Engraver through the US Creality Falcon store or the UK Creality store. It’s an impressive price for what you get.
This is a robust and solid piece of workshop equipment and entirely suitable for running a business in your home. It’s a very powerful laser and highly recommended.
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Phil South –
Contributor
Phil South has been writing about tech subjects for over 30 years. Starting out with Your Sinclair magazine in the 80s, and then MacUser and Computer Shopper. He’s designed user interfaces for groundbreaking music software, been the technical editor on film making and visual effects books for Elsevier, and helped create the MTE YouTube Channel. He lives and works in South Wales, UK.
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