I’m amazed they don’t tell you all the changes on their various websites beyond that it includes autofocus….
- Bye-bye slats, they give you a full size slide in honeycomb in the box which I’m actually impressed about
- Autofocus that actually works (note: no manual focus option, see below)
- The bottom tray isn’t as deep as the non-S because the honeycomb sits above it (but not IN the tray) the honeycomb is approximately at the height of the slats in the non-S
- It isn’t that clear beyond the numbers in the specs, but the reason you lose so much space is the autofocus module is huge(bigger than the laser unit)
- You lose about 10mm(!) in Z-height for cutting compared to the non-s, no idea why, the autofocus just doesn’t go that high in comparison to manual focus on the non-S model
Regarding the autofocus implementation
- It doesn’t have manual focus at all, it physically won’t slide low enough, the whole motorised autofocus carriage moves NOT the laser module; bare that in mind. You can screw and unscrew two grub screws but they’re grub screws, they’ll strip very very quickly and you need an Allan key to do it
- The sensor for it is TINY if you are engraving something smaller than the shroud you will have to build jigs or it will crash itself into the honeycomb
- Related to the above… it doesn’t have an auto stop function… it will continue to drill into your honeycomb if the sensor doesn’t pick anything up until you emergency stop
- The sensor doesn’t appear to work with semi transparent material (acrylic etc) - no idea if they can fix that in firmware because it appears to be IR
- Auto focus is well implemented from a UX perspective, one press raises the head, “long” press (0.5s) focuses
The manual mentions “Z-mode” which I assume is manual focus… kind of, but it doesn’t seem to work, it’s supposed to turn the x/y buttons into Z+/Z- but it just beeps at you and does nothing at the moment
Hope that answers questions for someone