Getting Started With Beam Bench: Install to Your First Burn

The laser arrives, you bolt the frame together, and then comes the part nobody's unboxing video warns you about: the machine does nothing on its own. Every cut and every engraving starts as a file in a piece of software, and staring at laser software for the first time can feel like sitting in a cockpit.

Beam Bench is our free laser app, built to make that first hour less intimidating. This guide walks you from download to your very first burn and assumes you have never used a laser before. By the end you'll have installed the app, connected your machine, set up a simple design, and burned it into a piece of scrap.

Before you download anything

Here is what you want within reach:

• A laser that speaks GRBL. Most hobby diode lasers do. If your machine came with a small controller board and connects over USB, it is very likely GRBL. Plain GRBL over a serial connection is Beam Bench's fully supported path. A longer list of controllers (FluidNC, grblHAL, Marlin, Snapmaker 2.0, Smoothieware, several LaserPecker models, Ruida RDC6442S over network, plus generic GRBL-compatible and Lihuiyu M2/M3 Nano boards) is present but currently labeled experimental in the app.
• A USB data cable. The one that came with your machine. If you substitute your own, make sure it is a data cable, not a charge-only lead.
• Scrap material. A piece of 3mm plywood is perfect for a first burn.
• Laser safety glasses rated for your laser's wavelength, plus somewhere ventilated to work.

One honest note before we start: Beam Bench is in public beta. It is free, it is improving fast, and occasionally you will find a rough edge. Where something matters for safety or sanity, this guide says so.

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Step 1: Install it

Grab the installer for your platform from beambench.com. Beam Bench runs on macOS 10.15 or newer (Intel or Apple Silicon), 64-bit Windows 10 or newer, and 64-bit Linux.

macOS

Open the downloaded .dmg and drag Beam Bench into Applications, then launch it from there. Builds are signed and notarized, so it should open without complaint. If Gatekeeper objects anyway, right-click the app and choose Open, or use System Settings, then Privacy & Security, then Open Anyway.

Windows

Run the setup .exe and follow the prompts. If SmartScreen shows "Windows protected your PC", click More info, then Run anyway. You may also need a serial driver for your laser, which we'll cover in the connection step.

Linux

Make the AppImage executable and run it:

chmod +x Beam.Bench_*.AppImage
./Beam.Bench_*.AppImage

To talk to a laser over USB, your user usually needs to join the dialout group (sudo usermod -aG dialout $USER, then log out and back in). Some distributions use uucp or tty instead.

Step 2: Your first look around

On first launch you are looking at a fresh Untitled Project.

The one concept that makes Beam Bench click is the Design / Run switch at the top of the window. Design is where you draw and arrange things. Run is where you talk to the machine. You will spend most of your time in Design and hop over to Run when it is time to burn.

A quick tour of Design mode:

• Top toolbar: project name, the Design/Run switch, New, Open, Save, Import, undo and redo, zoom, grid and snap toggles, Preview, and Device Settings.
• Left side: the drawing tools (Select, Draw, Shapes, Text, and friends) plus modifier tools like Offset and arrays.
• Right side: docked panels for Layers, Properties, and Outliner.
• Above the canvas: colored layer tabs appear once you draw or import something (a fresh project starts with none). Layers are how you tell the laser "cut this part, engrave that part", and each tab carries its own settings. More on that in step 5.

One thing to know: until you set up a machine profile, the canvas shows a generic 400 x 400 mm work area. That is a placeholder, not your machine's real bed size. The next step fixes it.

Step 3: Tell Beam Bench about your laser

Click Device Settings in the top toolbar. The Devices dialog opens.

1. Open the Profiles tab. Click New, give the profile a name, and Save it. The preset buttons stay greyed out until the profile is saved.
2. Now look under Machine Preset for your machine or something close to it. Generic GRBL Diode is a sensible starting point for most diode lasers. Choose it, click Preview to see what it will fill in, then Apply. Check the bed size matches your machine and click Set Active. Your canvas now matches your real work area.
3. Open the Connection tab. Choose Serial as the connection type, then pick your Controller and Profile.
4. Plug in the laser, power it on, and pick its Port. If nothing appears, try Show all ports or the refresh button.
5. Pick the Baud Rate. 115200 is the norm for GRBL machines and what the Generic GRBL Diode preset defaults to. Then click Connect and wait for the status to read Ready.

Two beginner traps live here:

On Windows, if no port ever appears, your machine's serial chip probably needs a driver. The common ones are CH340 and CP210x, available from the chip makers' sites, and your laser's manual will say which one you need.

Step 4: Put something on the canvas

For a first burn, keep it simple. Two good options:

Draw it. Grab the Shapes tool and drag out a rectangle (hold Shift to make it square). Add your name with the Text tool. Click into the shape menu and you'll also find ellipses, stars, and polygons. That is genuinely enough for a first project.

Import it. Click Import in the toolbar (or press Ctrl+I, Command+I on a Mac, or just drag a file onto the canvas). Beam Bench reads SVG vector files, common images (PNG, JPG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, WebP, TGA), DXF, AI, PDF, EPS, and even .lbrn / .lbrn2 project files from other laser programs, so designs you already have can come along.

Step 5: Speed, power, passes

This is the step that decides whether your laser cuts through, engraves nicely, or barely leaves a mark.

Every object on the canvas belongs to a layer, and every layer carries its own instructions for the machine. Double-click a layer tab above the canvas to open Cut Settings. The three numbers that matter:

Each layer also has a Mode: Line follows the outline (that is your cut), Fill shades the whole shape in (that is your engrave), and Offset Fill is a fill variant that works inward from the edges. If your layer holds a photo or other image, an Image mode appears too.

What numbers should you type? Honestly: test on scrap. Every machine, lens, and sheet of plywood is a little different, and the settings that cut clean on one 10W diode will barely scorch another. Start conservative, run a small test shape, and adjust. When you find settings you like, save them in the Material Library (under the Library button) so you never have to rediscover them.

Step 6: Preview before you burn

Press Alt+P (or click Preview in the toolbar). The Preview Window plays your job like a movie: you can scrub the timeline, speed it up to 40x, and toggle overlays like Show Travel to see how the head will move between shapes.

Thirty seconds here saves real material. You are checking three things: everything you meant to include is present, nothing sits outside the work area, and the cut happens after the engrave rather than before it (layer order is run order; drag the layer tabs to reorder).

Step 7: Frame it, then burn it

Time to switch that toggle from Design to Run. The workspace changes: you get Move controls for jogging the laser head, and a Laser Control panel with the buttons that matter.

1. Clamp or weight your scrap down and focus the laser per your machine's instructions.
2. Click Frame. By default the head traces the bounds of your job with the laser off, so you can see exactly where it will land on the material. The button asks you to confirm before it moves. Adjust the material, frame again. One check worth making: the panel also has a Frame: Laser On mode and a machine profile can switch framing to it, so make sure the button reads plain Frame before you trust the pass to be light-free.
3. Safety gear on. Then click Start.

Before anything moves, Beam Bench guards the run in layers. Start and Frame do not even appear in Laser Control until the machine is connected and idle. Pressing it builds a fresh preview, and artwork hanging outside the work area stops things right there with a bounds error. Last comes a preflight check (is the controller in laser mode, does the bed match the active profile, does homing check out), and if anything needs attention a Preflight Check dialog opens and names it. As a beginner, that is exactly the guardrail you want. A clean pass starts the job.

While it runs you get Pause, Stop, and Resume, plus a progress bar with elapsed and estimated remaining time. When it finishes, let the smoke clear before you lift the material. That first piece is a keeper, objectively crooked or not.

When something fights you

• No port shows up. Wrong or charge-only USB cable, or on Windows a missing CH340/CP210x driver. On Linux, check the dialout group membership from the install step. The Show all ports toggle in the Connection tab is worth a click too.
• The installer is blocked. Gatekeeper on macOS and SmartScreen on Windows both have an override, covered in step 1.
• There is no Start button, or the job will not run. Start and Frame only appear in Laser Control once the machine is connected and idle; an alarm state counts as not idle, so home the machine first. A bounds error means part of the design hangs outside the work area. And if the Preflight Check dialog opens, read it; it names the problem.
• Something else is weird. It is a beta, and the Console panel in Run mode shows the raw conversation with the controller, which is gold when you ask for help. Help, then Report a Bug sends a report straight to us.

Frequently asked questions

Will Beam Bench work with my laser?

If it is a GRBL machine with a serial connection, which covers most hobby diode lasers, yes, that is the fully supported path. FluidNC, grblHAL, Marlin, Snapmaker 2.0, Smoothieware, several LaserPecker models, Ruida RDC6442S, generic GRBL-compatible, and Lihuiyu M2/M3 Nano connections exist in the app but are currently marked experimental.

Is it actually free?

Yes. Beam Bench is free to download and use. It is made by us, the folks behind Craftgineer.

Can I keep using design files I already have?

Almost certainly. SVG, DXF, AI, PDF, EPS, common image formats, and .lbrn/.lbrn2 project files all import directly.

Your first burn is the hard one

Everything after this gets easier: the second burn takes half the time, and by the fifth you will be tweaking speed and power like you have done it for years. When you are ready for more, the Beam Bench overview shows what else the app can do, and our complete beginner's guide to laser engraving covers the craft side: materials, focus, and how to think about settings.

And when you want designs worth burning, that is what Craftgineer is for. MonoTrace turns any image into clean cut-ready vectors free, and Photo Converter turns photos into engravable line art. Download Beam Bench at beambench.com, make something, and enjoy the smell of a first project done.