Mr Beam's camera is attached to the inner side of the orange lid and takes pictures of the working area in regular intervals. These pictures are then sent to and processed by the Mr Beam software, which displays them in the tab called "working area". This makes positioning and aligning of your designs on top of the material very easy and convenient. In order for the camera to be able to take correct pictures, the lid of Mr Beam needs to be open.


Function and precision:

  • As the camera is located in the lid of the Mr Beam, it can only take pictures when the lid is open.
  • The camera of the Mr Beam takes and processes new pictures every 5-10 seconds. You can then see the black-and-white preview picture in the "working area" in the software. 
  • The precision of the preview picture is +/- 5 mm at the moment. This is why you should always calculate with a little bit more space while positioning your design. If your designs require more precision, (e.g. for a series of small objects with tightly packed designs) we recommend making use of manual positioning.
  • In the working area you will also find a "preview pane" in the left side bar, where you have options to adjust zoom and brightness of the preview picture.
  • When working with higher or thicker materials, the camera precision will decrease a bit more. You can fix this by adding the height of your material in the "Object Height" in the left side bar, to compensate for difference in camera perspective.

Manual Positioning:

In most cases positioning your design on your material with the help of the camera and preview in the software is the most convenient option. However, in some cases it does make more sense to position your designs manually. Especially when highest precision is required (accurate to the millimeter) we recommend using manual positioning. We also recommend making customized stencils for your designs. Especially when aiming for small-batch production, not only does this method offer highest precision - it also speeds up the whole process considerably. You can find more information on this method in the following article.  

This is how to check quickly, if your camera is working correctly:


  • The red light on the camera should turn on when Mr Beam software is running in the browser. 
  • do you see blinking pink circles in the working area? If your material or the axis are covering up any of the points inside the Mr Beam housing, the camera picture cannot be processed correctly. Please find more details on this topic in the following article.

    Check the status of your camera by clicking on Settings > Camera in the software and making sure all three check-points are marked green.


In this setting you can see two camera pictures: 

  • Raw Camera Picture (right): this is how your camera actually sees the working area.
  • Processed Camera Picture (left): this is how Mr Beam software adjusts the camera picture to make it more user-friendly, and displays it in the tab of the working area. 

It could take a moment for the Raw Camera Picture to load completely, as it is displayed in uncompressed quality.