xTool Air Assist

Laser engravers need an air assist pump. Not “should I get an air assist”? You need one. Period. An air assist pushes particles and soot away from your job giving you a cleaner engraving. They maximize efficiency in cutting and prevent flame ups and fires. They keep your optical glass clean. For years I have been using a Hydroponic pump ($60) which quite honestly works great and is about half the price of an xTool Air Assist pump ($139)

And yet something happened that made me make the switch to the xTool Air Pump.

When I would plug this air assist in or unplug it, my monitor would either go blank or corrupt the signal. I would then have to turn it off and then back on to restore the picture.

Then once or twice I had laser jobs just stop mid stream for no reason.

My first suspect was this air pump and I was able to confirm this was the culprit by simply plugging it into another electrical outlet. Actually, I completely isolated it by plugging it into a portable power supply, a Jackery 500.

No matter what I did I could not reproduce the laser failure with the air pump on another circuit.

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xTool RA2 Pro Rotary Review

FULL DISCLOSURE – I was provided an xTool D1 Pro with an RA2 Rotary Pro at no cost to review.  xTool has in no way attempted to influence my review. 

I’ve been given the great opportunity to review the xTool D1 Pro and included in the kit was an xTool RA2 Pro Rotary device.

There are a lot of videos online that show the xTool RA2 Pro but most of the ones I have seen are familiarization, and unboxing videos.

I appreciate all these reviews and learned a lot from all of them but when I get my mitts on a piece of gear I want to fill in the gaps that others may not touch on and I will discuss Lightburn settings quite a bit in this blog.

Regarding unboxing though……….my kit was missing the small bubble level.  Obviously that doesn’t affect assembly or use of the machine so it won’t affect anything discussed here.  Actually I have a couple of those mini bubble levels around here somewhere so no harm, no foul.

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xTool D1 Pro Review – Updated

NOTE:  xTool provided me a D1 Pro + RA2 Rotary kit for review.  All other accessories mentioned were purchased by me.  xTool has never attempted to influence my review. 

First of all let me expand on my note above.  Had I not been impressed with the xTool experience I would not have purchased any accessories.   So far I have bought an IR module, a Honeycomb kit , an Extension Kit with 1 additional Honeycomb panel, 8 risers, and a Laser Parts Kit.  And now I’m eyeing the Air Assist kit because a friend of mine has one and it is SUPER quiet.

Also it pulls about 17 watts and the current LOUD air assist pump i use now pulls about 40 watts.   If I run a job and I have any concern that a power loss would ruin the working piece……..I use a portable power supply such as a Jackery.

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xTool Infrared Laser Focusing

I purchased one of the xTool Infrared Laser modules and while it is super cool there does seem to be some internet chatter that the manual focusing mechanism is not 100% accurate.

There is a flip down bar that positions the laser 20mm from the work surface however the optimum focal range is 1mm or less.  That means even a tiny positioning error can greatly reduce the effectiveness of the engraving operation.

There are a few strategies for manual focusing the module however the best of the bunch in my opinion is to use a USB microscope to visually dial the beam down to the finest possible size.

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xTool 1064nm Infrared Laser Review

I was provided an xTool D1 Pro + RA2 Rotary kit to review for xTool.  I purchased the xTool Infrared Laser with my own funds.

So I have been using lasers for a few years now however the ability to engrave metals has eluded me.  One of these days I’ll probably pick up a proper fiber laser but I haven’t done it yet. Since I have an xTool D1 Pro 20 watt I decided to grab the xTool 1064nm Infrared Laser.

And as usual this blog will take you through the things that I have discovered while using it and not the typical unboxing video or walking you through the specifications..  The first thing that I discovered was that the box contained the xTool  laser module and a power brick, however the power brick didn’t contain the cable that goes from the outlet to the brick.

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xTool D1 Pro Review

Full Disclosure – xTool provided me an xTool D1 Pro at no cost to review.  They in no way whatsoever influenced this xTool D1 PRO review.  

NOTE:  Almost all my testing is done with Lightburn using the configuration file xTool provides here.

It doesn’t take me long to tell whether something is great, good, or problematic.  In the case of the xTool D1 Pro review my conclusion is landing somewhere in GreatLand™.

I’d be remiss in not mentioning that I have considerable desktop and CO2 laser usage and I know just what to do to reveal problems right away.

While waiting for my D1 Pro to show up I began asking people questions and joining forums and groups.  The first thing that hopped off the page for me were people asking “How do you keep things straight?”

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xTool D1 Pro Build and First Impressions

FULL DISCLOSURE – I was contacted by xTool and provided this xTool D1 Pro Kit to review.   This is just an initial impression following my build out,  with a further, more in-depth review to follow soon.

My laser is the 20 watt version with the RA2 Rotary.  It has an impressive working area size of 430 x 390 mm (16.93 x 15.35 inches).  The published Z height is 50 mm (2 inches).  I suppose they had to put some number there but the reality is you can laser an item of just about any height if you raise the laser with the included riser legs or 3D print legs or stack soup cans under the legs. The Z height can be just about anything.

Intro

As usual I won’t spend time with videos showing the unboxing or reposting things you can find on their product information page.  If you are looking at this blog and have an interest in getting an xTool D1 Pro you’ve already looked at their page and me re-hashing a picture of the box and listing the specifications (other than the ones I listed just above)  is simply redundant and a waste of your time.   Here on my blog I get something, use it, sometimes in ways it wasn’t meant to be used, and then tell you what I think.

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Multiple xTool Lasers with Lightburn on a Mac

I have two xTool D1 Pro lasers and I thought it would be easy to hook the xtool’s to Lightburn on one computer. It wasn’t.  While the solution is easy, the steps must be done in a specific order to make this work.

Using the xTool software, xTool Creative Space works perfectly.  This is a Lightburn / Mac / USB issue.

Fortunately there is a way to make this work.

When I first started this I had the red D1 Pro 20 watt with the extended bed hooked up.  It worked perfectly.  Then I bought an xTool D1 Pro 10 watt and hooked it to the same computer.

This is when the trouble began.

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