(6th December 2023: use the code Xmas150 to get $150 off this laser until 31st December 2023. My readers also get a free material pack.)
The AlgoLaser Delta is a 22W laser cutter and engraver with a built-in touch screen, WiFi, smart air assist pump and speeds of up to 30,000mm/min making it the fastest laser I’ve tested so far.
I’ll run through its features and thoroughly test all of AlgoLaser’s marketing claims to see if this is the right laser for you.
If lasers are new to you I’d highly recommend taking a look at some of my previous articles that introduce them and show examples of what they’re capable of. Start with my Introduction to Laser Cutters, then look at my more recent article on the xTool D1 Pro for a few more real life examples.
So let’s take a closer look.
Overview
The laser comes mostly assembled.
You just need to screw in the air assist nozzle, attach the gantry with 4 bolts and slip the laser module onto its mount.
There’s a metal lever that locks it in place.
Then you need to screw in the X-axis belt tensioning bolt to tighten the X-axis belt and also adjust the tension on the 2 Y-axes’ belts with their already installed tensioning bolts.
Finally with the machine upside down you can attach the 4 feet and wireless antenna.
The laser module has a magnetically attached shroud and there’s a spring loaded focus arm to set the laser focus. Just push the arm down to lock it in place. Then open the laser module’s locking lever and adjust the height of the laser until the focus arm just touches the material you’ll be engraving. Lock the laser module in place and press the focus arm’s release button to send the arm back into its housing.
The Delta comes with an air assist pump that is controlled by the laser itself and additionally has a manual air volume control. It plugs into the side of the machine and its air hose attaches to the integrated hose on the machine.
You then push the machine’s hose into the laser module. Make sure it’s fully seated – it goes in a little further than you think.
The cable and air hose management is excellent, although it can still catch at the rear left of the machine.
You can then plug in the machine’s 24V, 6A AC adapter and switch it on. As well as the power switch there’s also an emergency stop button and a key lock. The key lock is useful if there are children around or if you’re in a shared environment. The front of the machine has an RGB light strip.
This is the first laser I’ve tested with a built-in LCD screen. The machine has built-in WiFi and you can connect to your local WiFi network directly from the machine. You can then see its IP address if you want to control it wirelessly using Lightburn.
There’s also a smartphone app that lets you control the laser wirelessly but I found this a little buggy so mostly avoided it.
You can start using the laser straight away via its screen. There are a few images already included on its built in 32GB storage. Or you can load your own images via a USB stick.
First off I tried engraving a preloaded butterfly on some wood. I only needed to select the material type and tap engrave. You can frame the job to check you’re all lined up. Here I encountered my first issue with the machine.
The LCD screen repeatedly displayed a “pressure warning”. There appeared to be an issue with airflow through the laser module. I contacted support who sent me a replacement laser module which did help with airflow but I still received this warning, just less frequently.
I’ve been in touch with support over these last couple of months, and just today I’ve received an updated firmware that appears to have fixed this pressure warning.
But for most of this review, I unplugged the smart air pump and used another air pump which works ok – I just couldn’t control it via the machine.
I retried the butterfly with the replacement laser which came out pretty well considering I just used the machine’s built in preset.
Performance
The Delta comes with a 22W laser module with 4 stacked 5.5W diodes which AlgoLaser claims has a 40% smaller spot size compared to other lasers. They also use a special technology to compress the laser spots to more of a square than the usual rectangle – which should make for more consistent and accurate cuts in both the X and Y direction.
It’s not particularly easy to reliably confirm these specs, but their smaller spot size claim is a little misleading. At 100% power the spot size is 0.16mm x 0.14mm which is actually bigger than the xTool D1 Pro’s more powerful 40W laser with a 0.10 x 0.15mm spot size, albeit more square. And the dot size usually increases with power, all things being equal. Their claims seem to be relating to the spot size at lower power. At 3% power the spot size is only 0.06mm x 0.06mm, but I’m not sure anyone is using their lasers as 3% power.
The Delta does have a decent sized work area: 440mm x 415mm – larger than the xTool D1 Pro even with its smaller 10W module attached.
It’s also capable of some impressive speeds – up to 30,000mm/min or 500mm/s – faster than anything I’ve tested so far.
I used Lightburn with the Delta connected via USB-C and it was found with the “Find my laser”. If you’ve connected the machine to your WiFi network you can edit this connection and change the serial connection to Ethernet. Just enter the IP address of the machine, visible on the LCD display.
In Device Settings I like to enable the laser fire radio button and its accompanying “laser on when framing” radio button. I set the laser power to 0.5%.
This is the only way to accurately set up a job unless you’re using absolute positioning, but I found it almost impossible with the laser shield attached. I had to remove it most of the time which I would not recommend. I don’t like using these diodes without an enclosure, and without a protective shroud you’re relying purely on your glasses.
I was interested to test some of AlgoLaser’s marketing claims around its cutting performance. For cutting I had maximum air flow and used a honeycomb bed underneath the material to be cut.
I could cut 6mm birch plywood at 150mm/min and 6mm black MDF at 200mm/min.
This was a little less than half the speed of the 40W module on the xTool. AlgoLaser claims the 22W module can cut 30mm pine in 1 pass.
But it couldn’t get through 20mm pine even in two passes. And I did try dropping the focus slightly.
It did easily cut some 12mm pine and some 10mm American Black Walnut hardwood.
I also tried cutting 0.1mm stainless steel which it just managed.
I’ve been asked a few times about cutting EVA foam so I tried cutting some 14mm floor mats which it managed with ease at 800mm/minute. If you try this, do make sure they’re EVA foam and not PVC based.
Finally I tried some 10mm black acrylic which AlgoLaser claims is possible with one just pass. It did get through it but it took 3 passes at 100mm/minute, so I’m not quite sure how they are cutting it with just one pass. It’s a piece of 10mm acrylic that was supplied by them too. It did manage to get through 5mm black acrylic in one pass though.
Without any included enclosure, I couldn’t use extraction so most of my cutting was done up in my workshop with the doors and windows open and wearing a face mask.
I did try some engraving too starting off with a material test grid on some Baltic birch. Even at its highest speed of 30,000mm/min I got decent results with just 30-40% power. But I did need to turn off the machine’s vibration alarm after my first attempt stopped just after it had started. I tried this polar bear image at maximum speed with 100% power which came out pretty well.
Just today I retried this engraving with the smart pump and the latest firmware that appears to have fixed the pressure warning. But on the first attempt it turned off the laser mid-print so this new firmware still seems buggy. The second attempt worked ok and the smart air pump automatically switched from 30% for engraving to 100% for the final cut.
I tried engraving the polar bear image directly from the USB stick. You can preview the image and adjust settings, including the output size although the height and width are mixed up. This failed the first time I tried it – I might have had the laser still connected via USB. But the second attempt worked ok. I also saved the output from Lightburn as a Gcode file which I was also able to laser directly from the USB stick.
I didn’t get a rotary with this machine, but there is a convenient switch which makes it easy to change the Y-axis from the machine to the rotary.
Conclusions
AlgoLaser is a new company and the Delta is a well thought out laser with some unique features and it’s great to see it includes a smart air-assist pump. It comes mostly assembled and is well built – which helps it achieve its high engraving speeds. It also has the best cable and air hose management I’ve seen on any laser. And it’s the first machine I’ve tested with a built-in LCD screen, which can be useful depending on how you use your laser. For quick or repeat jobs, sending engravings from the built in storage or a USB stick is handy. Personally I prefer the finer control of using Lightburn which worked both with the USB connection and wirelessly.
For me, the most useful feature of the LCD screen is jogging the laser into position. It is much easier than trying to do this through Lightburn.
Unfortunately I did have a few issues with this machine which I’ve already discussed. AlgoLaser sent a replacement laser module to resolve the pressure warning error which improved the blocked air flow for the air assist, but I still got error messages just less frequently. And it arrived damaged with a crushed laser LED which wasn’t a great user experience. As previously mentioned it looks like the firmware I got today fixes the pressure warning but in my brief testing it appears to introduce other issues. I’ll try and keep this article updated if there are any further firmware releases.
I was sent one of the early machines, so I’m hopeful the issues I’ve had won’t affect machines bought from now on. If so, the Delta is a tempting offering particularly if you like the idea of engraving without connecting a computer, which might be useful in a commercial environment. The easy assembly and touch screen does also make it appealing to new users.
The 22W laser module is a good middle ground for most people and the frame of the Delta lists support for other modules including a 40W laser. Additionally, they’re planning on releasing an enclosure and height adjustment motor for this model. I’d definitely recommend an enclosure – I’m really not keen on using these machines without one.
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Use Xmas150 to get $150 off the list price! My readers also get a free material pack.
AlgoLaser Delta 22W: https://algolaser.com/products/algolaser-delta-22w-diode-laser-engraver
AlgoLaser Laser Engraver entire range: https://algolaser.com/
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