While waiting for Flux to get back to me, I’ve been looking for the Beambox software manuals and, not having found any, have explored the interface a little further. It looks better than in these photos — they were shot using my phone, which doesn’t capture LED screens well so I reduced the Moiré stripes in Photoshop.

This is the home screen:

The Browse and Trace buttons don’t go anywhere. The Maintain button goes here:

Those indicators at the top: I don’t know what they mean.

• black thing: mystery [update: it’s the door sensor]
• water drop: laser cooling jacket needs water? But the reservoir is already full. [update: this feature hasn’t been implemented yet]
• temperature: temperature of what?
• four black bars: ???

The movement keys almost explain themselves. The one thing that isn’t evident is that you have to press them for each movement step. Holding them down registers as only one step. They are a little bit small for my fingers to aim for but I much prefer this layout over the buttons on some cheaper laser cutters, especially the ones that don’t align with the direction of motion.

The ‘max’ and ‘min’ buttons seem set to odd positions. For instance, point A is over the frame, not over the honeycomb. And points B and D are not all the way over to the right. You can go further right, but when you press B or D the cutting head moves back towards the middle of the x-range.

Moving from C to D entails moving right along the x-axis as well as a small (and surprising) movement up the y-axis.

I have not yet worked out how to set the max and min ordinates.

About all those buttons below:

• Laser pulse: turns on the water pump, but no other action yet.
• Laser: haven’t tried it, given that my calibration efforts still elicit a “door opened” error.
• Snapshot: shows the view through the camera, which is mounted above (and travels with) the cutting head.
• Power: haven’t tried it.
• Speed: haven’t tried it.
• Motors: whirrs the motors a bit, but I can’t tell what for.
• Air pump: activates the cutting head airflow, which comes out in pulses.
• Pump: activates the water pump for the laser cooling jacket, and the associated heat exchanger air pump. Air comes out of the ventilation grille on the right-hand side of the Beambox, but I don’t get any water flow through the cooling jacket.
• Ventilator: activates the exhaust fan.
• Backlight: switches off the display. You can’t see a thing, so remember where the backlight button is to turn it back on again.
• TouchSig: can’t tell what this does. It appears to do nothing.
• Cam Led: toggles the illumination LED for the camera.
• Work Led: toggles the two LED strips that illuminate the workspace.

Back in the Settings dialog, we find this:

Are all Beamboxes named Jaiden? The ventilator rotation speed gives a predictable setting that looks like it would reduce the exhaust rate. I don’t see what the point would be in running it slower, but will investigate it later. Perhaps it is to reduce noise when cutting low-smoke materials.

Pressing the Switch Motor Direction button gives this menu, which I don’t yet understand, and am not game to try out yet: