Bambu Lab’s First Laser Engraver Lands Days After a $27.6M Patent Loss to Stratasys

Bambu Lab just had a rough week in court. On September 17, a federal jury in the Eastern District of Texas ordered the company to pay Stratasys $27.6 million after finding that four Bambu Lab-linked entities had willfully infringed four of Stratasys’s 3D printing patents. It’s the first verdict in a much bigger legal fight between the two companies that started back in August 2024, with a second, undated trial still ahead. Bambu Lab has won some ground of its own at the patent office, but this round went to Stratasys.

In a statement sent to 3Dnatives on September 18th, Bambu Lab clarified their position: “We appreciate the time and effort of the jury in considering this matter. While we respect the judicial process, we disagree with the verdict reached in this case. The law provides Bambu with the right to seek post-trial review and to appeal, and Bambu intends to avail itself of these legal processes.”

Whether it was a timing coincidence or a bit of strategy, a few days later, Bambu Lab launched a new product: its first-ever laser engraver.

Bambu Lab Enters a New Category with a Laser Engraver

On September 22, the company unveiled the R1, a 55W CO2 laser cutter and engraver and its first product that isn’t directly related to 3D printing. It’s a notable moment for a company that’s been known for FDM printers.

The Bambu Lab laser engraver cuts and engraves wood, acrylic, leather, paper and fabric, and can engrave glass, stone and coated metal. It can also handle up to 18mm plywood and 20mm acrylic, works on a 600 x 300mm bed, and can pull in stock up to 3 meters long with the optional Conveyor accessory.

An example of engraved acryilic material.

What Makes the R1 Different From Other CO2 Lasers

The standout feature is Auto Laser Alignment. Anyone who’s owned a CO2 laser knows the mirror alignment ritual: thermal paper, test shots, tiny screw adjustments, repeat until it’s finally dialed in. Bambu says its system reads the beam automatically and corrects it with motorized actuators in about a minute, no burn marks required, which sounds like a nice quality of life improvement if it works as advertised.

The R1 also leans on something Bambu calls the TriSense System, which is three separate tools working together before a single cut happens. A BirdsEye camera takes in the whole work area, a second camera on the toolhead zeroes in on the material, and a pinpoint laser marks the exact spot being targeted. From there, a distance measurement laser reads the surface height and adjusts focus on the fly, which matters for anything that isn’t perfectly flat, like the curve of a bowl. XY encoders round it out by tracking the toolhead’s position in real time so the machine always knows where it is mid-job. Bambu says this lets the R1 trace a printed outline, like the shape of a sticker, and cut along it with accuracy under 0.2mm.

There’s also some inherited engineering from Bambu’s printers. Vibration compensation models out the mechanical resonance that normally leaves jagged edges after a sharp direction change, something the company already uses to keep its 3D prints from showing ringing artifacts. And because laser power at a fixed setting tends to burn darker in slow sections and lighter in fast ones, the R1 adjusts power in sync with speed to keep tone even across a piece, even at speeds up to 1000mm/s.

The R1 Laser Engraver aligns its own optical path in about a minute.

It’s a new category for the company, and it plugs into the same MakerWorld account and Bambu Suite software people already use, so anyone already in the Bambu ecosystem shouldn’t have much of a learning curve. Pre-orders for the R1 open today through the official Bambu Lab store, priced at $2,499 in the US and €2,499 in the EU, with shipping starting in October.

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*All photo credits: Bambu Lab