Autofocus
One of the biggest innovations in the TS2 is the autofocus system, which works similarly to the auto-leveling systems on a 3D printer. Sitting alongside the laser is a simple mechanical probe. Combined with a stepper motor on the z-axis to raise and lower the laser head automatically, this enables it to figure it the correct height for ideal focus on your material.
The process isn’t entirely automatic, however. When you setup the machine in Laser GRBL or LightBurn, you’ll find some new macro buttons are created. These enable you to set the thickness of the material for cutting, or simply to tell the machine you want to engrave on the surface. Cutting normally requires you to do some quick math to figure out half the thickness of the material, then take that away from the fixed focal length of the lens (usually 50mm). So for instance, the ideal cutting distance for 2mm thick MDF would be 49mm from the surface (thereby focussed in the middle of the material). On other engravers, you need to use a set of measuring discs, which is fiddly, imprecise, and tedious. With the TS2, you just click a button.
Safety
Aside from fumes, the 10W laser head is the biggest safety concern, as it can easily damage your eyesight, permanently blind you, or cause serious burns (as well as the obvious fire risk). Included in the package is a generic set of safety goggles, though the laser head itself is also surrounded by a laser-blocking piece of plexiglass that should prevent most accidents when viewing from above. A bigger concern can often be laser light leakage, bouncing off to the side—particularly when you have smaller people that might not be as well versed in laser safety. To that end, the front of the TS2 features another large piece of light-blocking acrylic.
In terms of other safety sensors, the TS2 laser engraver also features a gyroscope that will terminate the burn if the machine is titled a significant degree—such as being pulled to the floor or lifted up. There’s a basic flame sensor too, though you might need to tweak it to prevent false alarms (to the extent that I got frustrated with it and ended up disabling it completely).
Finally, there’s a big red emergency stop button (which also works well as a generic power button). It latches off, so just push it down to power everything immediately off. You’ll need to twist it to turn the machine back on again, so this can’t be done accidentally.
While dangers will always be there with any laser engraver—especially an open frame one—Two Trees have put a lot of thought into making it as safe as functionally possible for this design.
Performance
Two Trees claims it can cut up to 8mm plywood in one pass, but my previous experience with 10W lasers has shown this to be impossible, and the TS2 is no different. Balsa wood, maybe, but I don’t have any of that to hand. It’s also important to note that “plywood” covers a broad range of products, all of which may use a different manufacturing process, layer wood, and glue. So any claims or prescribed settings are not necessarily going to be true for you.
I was able to cleanly cut through 4mm plywood in two passes (using 200mm/min and 100% power). Any slower resulted in charcoal.
The large format of the TS2 opens up a lot of creative projects that weren’t possible on other hobby engravers, such as this Catan resource card holder. While some projects can be printed in two or more parts, this couldn’t.
This tree of life also came out well, and was the largest thing I made on the TS2.
Engraving performance was also excellent, with some good contrast on this piece of slate (though Pickle Rick wasn’t a great image to use, I admit).
To engrave on stainless steel, I had to first spray with black primer. This ensures the laser won’t reflect back and burn your eyes out, or start a fire in your roof. The end result has some good definition and contrast, but as you can see, the lack of a camera for positioning meant that getting it centered was extremely difficult. If you need to work with precise positioning on small or precut pieces (as opposed to cutting the item out of a larger piece), you should really budget upwards of $2000 for a machine equipped with a top-down camera. This will show you exactly where the design is going to be engraved.
Finally, Two Trees included some thin sheet aluminum business cards of various colors.
You’ll notice a slight skew on one of them; this came from somewhere on the Y-axis catching slightly. Thankfully support was able to diagnose the issue, and it was an easy fix without needing any parts.
(That contains my secret guest Wi-Fi password, so don’t actually scan that!)
My results with Plexiglass (acrylic) were less successful. Eventually, I found the right settings to cut through the black sample (again, the recommended settings seemed far too optimistic), but didn’t have any luck with opaque pink. Acrylic isn’t a material I work with often, so those with more experience there might have more luck.
What you can creat with Two Trees laser engraver machine TS2?
Engraving materials: Wood, plastic, paper, leather, bamboo, stainless steel, acrylic, glass,etc.
Is the Two Trees TS2 the Laser Engraver for You?
This laser power is average in terms of cutting performance, but the main selling point of the TS2 is the sheer size of the working area possible. That opens up a lot of creative projects that just aren’t possible on smaller hobby engravers. This will be your main deciding factor, and if you don’t think you need that size of working area, there’s no need to spend this much. You can find other 10W laser engraver machines for around $300-400 that should be sufficient for your needs.
Combined with autohoming, the autofocus feature is an incredibly useful innovation that means that once you’ve placed your material down, you can be hands-off from the laser engraver and just focus on the software side of things. I hope to see it integrated in more machines moving forward, but alone, doesn’t entirely justify the price of TS2 for your first laser engraver. It does make the choice obvious if you’re choosing between a selection of large format laser engravers that don’t have autofocus, though.
The rulers on the side are a great utility feature, but a missed opportunity. It would have been nice if they aligned with axes zero point, to aid with positioning.
Overall, the Two Trees TS2 is a fantastic choice for beginners and pros alike, but only if you need a large engraving area. It’s well designed, easily built, and pairs well with LightBurn software. It’s about as safe as can be, but the sheer size of the machine makes traditional enclosures tricky and really limits where you’ll be able to use it.
