Laser etch your tools! With the Xtool IR laser!

welcome back to Dan's Pro Shop everybody why don't you have a seat relax let me tell you a story now this one is one of my absolute favorites this one is about a devilishly handsome young man and his aspirations for something more for the longest time this young man has been absolutely addicted to purchasing using and just attaining more and more tools but at the same time this young man also discovered that there is a difficulty in retaining one's tools for some strange reason all the other fellows and knights in the land just had to have what this young man had so what did he do he resorted to anything he could think of to make his tools is distinct and standout from anyone else's spray paint engraving even welding his name or identification on said tools but let me tell you boys and girls we got a better way bam xtool has a better option in case you guys missed the first video on this xtool D1 system be sure to check it out up here after this one obviously but they have released an IR laser that means infrared this thing is super intense and way more powerful than the original one this gives us the ability to etch on different Metals steel Chrome plated stuff aluminum copper whatever you want but either way let's dig into this thing and see what it's all [Music] about [Music] so guys like I mentioned this is the infrared laser module brought to you by xtool and if you guys saw the previous video about the D1 Pro Laser system this is an add-on module that I think absolutely takes this thing to the next level like quite literally in the package here obviously you get the infrared module and you get a jacked up power supply I think this takes you up to like uh 25 or 26 volt DC or something but either way this thing requires a lot more gws you know more power so whenever you purchase this thing it comes with everything that you need to plug and play into your D1 Pro now that uh you guys kind of know what's going on with this thing let's go over to the existing D1 in its OE configuration and I've even done a little upgrading on that thing since since last time you guys have saw it so let's check out what's going on over there so you guys might know you might not but the factory laser that this system comes with has the ability to have an air assist and that is purchasable from X tool they have like this little 120 plugin basically air compressor and it comes with some pneumatic stuff and yada yada yada but if you guys know anything about me you know I pride myself and doing stuff myself and let's be honest nine times out of 10 whenever you make something yourself it's usually better so I went about this and I saw the options that were available and what it can do so if you're doing this in a shop chances are you have an air compressor anyway because most of the stuff in your shop runs on air well maybe not so much anymore but regardless I'm sure that you guys probably have access to air in your shop so what I did is just got a regulator put a male air check on it on I plug it into my shop air neck this thing down to I don't know 6 8 PSI so this is a really small regulator I think it caps out at like 25 or something that way on the gauge you can really dial down what you want on the outside here on the like the regulated Port of the regulator I simply have a quarter turn ball valve so not only can I regulate the pressure of the air but I can regulate the flow of the air and you guys see here I have a quar inch piece of polyurethane tubing and that Clips in right to the factory port on the laser that it comes with I'll bring you guys in on the other side so you can see more what's going on about this but dude this absolutely changed everything it greatly increases the efficiency of your cut because it turns this thing into like a lowgrade plasma cutter now please don't misconstrue that this thing is not a CNC plasma cutter but the idea behind it is the same you have some kind of something in this case a laser removing material just like a plasma cutter would and then we have an air assist to remove the debris from The Arc or laser so you can get through a lot more stuff a lot more quickly and specifically whenever we're cutting through wood it really gets rid of that burn mark around your cut area because not only are we removing debris effectively from the cut area but it's keeping it cool too and if you do this correctly and pay mind to how you route your wires and everything like take your time with this if you decide to go this route like I just took this regulator and mounted it right on the side of the rail here I felt like that was a good application and it's been working great ever since but like I said whenever you're cutting stuff that airf flow that go goes around the head of the laser it just greatly increases your productivity and honestly the quality of the cut that you get now I know I'm rambling about this one and the whole point of this is the IR laser that is a totally different game because now we're not limited to like non feris stuff like wood paper cardboard whatever I mean yeah you guys saw me do these business cards in the last one well this is anodized aluminum so the laser wasn't cutting the aluminum it was just removing the anodizing from the aluminum so yeah it's cool you can do stuff like that but whenever it comes to etching metal this thing really doesn't have the Gusto you know it kind of just like reflects off the surface and really doesn't give you anything but this IR module more power let's go through and I can show you guys better this air setup on the head and we'll go over the simple procedure of switch switching this to the new one couldn't be any easier I promise you so here's a slightly better look of the air setup that I have going on here instead of using that OE option of a air pump or whatever they're using I just took that regulator into a valve a hose into the side of the factory fitting that this thing comes with so like I said in case you guys are wondering this is just a regular quarter inch piece of polyurethane tubin uh this might be a little bit too much but it gives you plenty of room this thing to move in the X and Y and I have absolutely no issues with this thing binding up but because this air jet goes right around the nozzle it just makes everything so much cleaner now without further Ado let's go ahead and change the head to the new one so guys this process is super straightforward and really easy if you have the air set up you just push this uh tab here on the top of the fitting your hose pulls right out set that off to the side if you don't have that it's even easier you don't need to mess with it at all now on the side here there is a locking tab that allows this thing to come in and out that's how you adjust your Z on the laser itself now on the back here there is the plug that goes into this thing this can be a little cumbersome and difficult so take your time make sure you don't break the plug but there's a tab back here you undo and pull up out of the plug in the back of the module once you get that all taken out you can slide the wiring out of this little uh I know retaining tab on top here that's just what keeps your wire management in check that's all that's involved with taking this thing apart now we can put the new one in its place look at this big mamama Jama huh you can tell just by the sheer size of it that this thing means business I mean look at the difference here this is the OE one that it comes with and this is the upgraded IR module it has the exact same setup on the back so this track indexes with the one on the the XY and the plug is exactly the same it still has an internal cooling fan it has the clip on top for the wires the only thing that's really different is it doesn't have this guard thing here on the bottom because the light is more direct I'll get to that in a point in a minute and it also does not have the airport option like this one does but honestly for the amount of power this thing has you really don't need it and also just like the original one there is a depth gauge but uh I have concerns about that that we get to when it comes to installing the IR module you just simply do the exact same thing in Reverse we take the plug here install until you hear the click going together is much easier than coming apart make sure you put your wiring through the little cradle up there on top there you have it tighten down your jam nut and this thing is ready to rock the only thing that that we have to do is change a couple few little things on the programming to ensure that this thing works properly and we're going to have to set the Z height on this thing away from our material but like I said we'll get to that all right now we're over here at the PC and once again guys please forgive my lack of uh I don't know digital knowledge I really don't know how to do the screen share thing to actually put the screen of the computer on the video but I think this is good enough that you guys will get the point so we are using the lightburn software for the D1 Pro now if you guys saw the first video you know that there are options to use either the xtool programming or the light bur in this particular case I use the lightburn and everything's been doing great now I've gone over how to put things in your cutting area so right here I just have simple letters Dance Pro Shop and whenever you put something in your cutting area it then opens up how and where and how intense and everything your cut actually is so for the new infrared module there is something that you have to change to make sure that this works whenever you have something in your cutting field this part up here in the cuts and layers menu becomes clickable go up here and doubleclick this this brings up a sub menu with more options on how your laser works the thing that we're concerned with with right here constant power mode this does not need to be on whenever you're using the original laser but whenever you install the IR laser this has to be on this enables that thing to have juice the entire time it's running and this is absolutely crucial it will not work unless you do this so make sure that your constant power mode is on once you change that you have to click okay and then it'll save your settings now once you're sure that you have that done everything else pretty much operates exactly the same you frame out what you want to do you can set your Origins you can f set your feeds and speeds and intensity and everything that you would do regularly before you can change between just the line on the outside you can fill your entire project you can offset fi it there is so much stuff that you can do really this operates very similarly to like the paint program on everybody's PC it's really user friendly and it's really not that difficult to learn I promise now let's get over to the laser head and set something up and actually do it now guys like I had mentioned a moment ago this thing has that little tab thing on the bottom here to help you set up your Z distance your up and down the distance away from the head of the laser to your work piece however this thing is for the birds it doesn't work at all as far as I'm concerned just pretend it's not even there it does does not work not even close the original laser this guy the one it comes with the focus aspect of this laser is a lot more forgiving than this one you probably have a solid oh I don't know probably 10 mil that you can work with to be closer or further away from your workpiece this one you have about one or two the focus on this laser has to be spot on for it to work and believe me you will notice this because there is a function in the program that allows you to uh force on the laser like you can fire it intentionally without actually running a program and you can play with the Z the up and down on this thing and you will notice immediately when it's in the correct spot and if you are just a sco I mean a hair too low or too High it will not work you get that perfect white light it sounds like sizzling bacon like laying down a good Weld and you know you're in the right spot but it can be incredibly tricky to do I have found a way around this now guys take this for what it's worth but I spent the time to do this so you don't have to there is like that perfect happy middle that we're trying to find and I have found that from the base of this thing not from the laser head from the base of the main module to the top of your workpiece need needs to be almost exactly 20 mil so do yourself a favor walk around your shop go through the house whatever you need to do and find something that is 20 mm high and in this case this just happens to be a Victor torch box but uh I got a bunch of these laying around because I go through a bunch of torch tips but lucky me the height of this thing is exactly 20 mm or it's like 19.99 it it's close enough so whenever I go to set my Z height between the bottom of this IR module and the top of my work piece I simply set this on top of it and then I run my laser down until it touches there you go there is your 20 mm it may not be spot on but boy this is way closer than that thing on the side gets you to trust me it's worth doing this step now without any further Ado let's throw something metal in here and get some sparks flying shall we take the this guy for example a regular old 10 mm ratcheting wrench now like we were talking about that awesome story in the beginning if you're anything like me and you have tools coming out of your ears and a lot of those tools are at work or they travel with you keeping track of your stuff can be difficult so putting your name or your brand or something on your tools can absolutely be life-changing and now that we have something like this man if you got the time and the ambition you can make yourself a solid professional looking set of tools with your name your logo whatever you want on it so let's go ahead rig this thing up and see what we can do when it comes to setting things up like I mentioned the Z is incredibly particular with this module so making sure that you have your part flat in respect to the actual machine is super critical and since we have a weird side profile here on this wrench like the ratcheting head sticks out further than the main body I just simply uh put it up here on a piece of wood so that big part can hang over the end I'm going to go ahead and throw some painters tape over the end of this thing to just make sure it stays in place and it doesn't move while we're setting up there we go it's not too scientific but it'll work it'll at very least keep this thing from moving around whenever the machine is jogging and because I have it on a piece of wood here and not physically attached to the table it gives me the ability to move this thing so whenever I'm doing my frame out it's a little bit easier to kind of do so whenever we go to set this thing up it's perfect perfectly fine to move this by hand like you're not going to hurt anything with these encoder Motors it's okay to move whenever you fire this thing up it re home so it knows where everything is the only thing we really have left to do before we do the programming part of it is set our Z so go ahead and find your whatever you decided it to be 20 mm block and set your height in between the top of your workpiece and the bottom of the module so super simple here guys there we go there's my 20 mil between my workpiece and the bottom of the laser so we will find out real quick if that's sufficient or not but now let's go back over to the computer set up what we want it to do and send it over to this thing all righty guys you will see here when I power this thing up it immediately goes right back home and that is a setting in the light and program so you don't have to do it that way I just do it because whenever I leave here I make sure that I power this thing down it's just a good idea whenever you're not around stuff just turn it off so you know nothing's going to happen chances are it's not but either way so now you guys saw that I had that Dan's Pro Shop logo in here we're simply just going to frame it out and frame out I mean like the laser will tell you where it's actually going to be so you simply hit frame and the laser will go to where you have have it on the grid on your program so you can tell right there I'm a good bit off from where we need to be so thank goodness I'm on that little piece of wood here we can move this to right about where it's going to be and whenever the frame like stops when it comes to an end it always stops at the top left corner so it kind of helps you decide where this is going to be and then we just hit frame again until we're happy with where everything is now this is the part that can take a little bit of time and patience you know once you etch this thing it's etched for eternity this is kind of like glue and PVC together you get one shot at it so if you're unhappy with your first result sorry man it's take your time and make sure you do it right on the first shot so this is kind of like painting a car if you need to spend 45 minutes setting up your piece to ensure that the end result is going to be good trust me take the time to do it correctly now cool guys so I don't know I did that frame out about 10 12 times just to make absolutely sure that it's correct now I'll bring you over here before I hit the go button so you can actually see what's happening now everything is finally ready to rock we're good we have our frames set we have our Z set I have my speed for the X and Y set at 200 mm/ second and I have the power maxed out of 100% cuz we just want to really dig into this thing only thing left to do is hit that start button let's see what she got now guys you see this bright white light here and you can kind of hear it crispy a little bit if it honestly sounds like whenever you're starting an arc with a welder and honestly it smells the same too but you guys will know iMed immediately if you have your Z height set correctly because you will not get this bright white light if that doesn't happen that means that your Z is out and you got to stop and readjust for that I'll go ahead and put the mic down there so you don't have to listen to me and you can hear this thing running so you guys see what I mean about that like fry and baking sound this is quite literally just creating an arc like a welder wood it's just doing it with an infrared laser so we are quite literally removing or etching material onto a solid metal in this case a Chrome plated wrench dude I'm telling you my entire tool collection obviously over a course of time everything is going to have my name on it this is just so cool and it comes out amazing professional like it looks like it was bought right off the Snap-on truck this way I can't tell you guys how cool this is now if you guys saw the previous video about this thing these are not the fastest in the world so don't plan on making a production team with this it does take a little bit of time so guys that wraps up this print like I said it's not earth shattering in the speed of this thing but just the fact that you can now do this crap at home home like professional quality laser etching and just because I'm doing this on wrenches and tools and sockets and stuff dude that is the tip of the iceberg it's quite literally your imagination whatever you want to do with this thing you can and not to mention xtool sells a bunch of accessories that go along with this thing like they have like a mini rotary station it's like the chuck on a lathe that is geared with an encoder motor that is controlled by the Light bur programming so you can do cylindrical or I don't know any kind of oval shaped spherical stuff like if you want to make like your own Christmas decoration ornaments and like the sides of coffee cups and whatever you want to do it gives you that ability so it'll spin underneath the laser head and another little cool thing I picked up here these are risers for the legs that this thing sits on because yes you can change the height of the actual laser itself but you're limited it only goes so far so if you need to physically raise this thing like you don't have to do it all janky and set this thing up on bricks I mean you can if you want to but like I mentioned having your workpiece perfectly flat and parallel with the bottom of the laser is critical so they have these fancy machined aluminum legs that screw right into the bottom of the factory legs and you can stack as many of these things together as you want you can have this thing six feet off the table if you want to but these are cool I'll put a link for all this stuff down in the description go ahead and yank this thing out [Music] here man I'm impressed with this every time I'll show you guys check this out guys look at that professional laser eted Dan's Pro Shop into a 10 mm wrench now you guys can see here there's a little bit of CH going on let's take a little bit of isopropyl alcohol on a microfiber and clean that right up we'll go ahead and take our finished work piece here a little bit of rubbing alcohol check that out there is our finished product how awesome is this and it's a legit laser etching like this isn't going to come off this thing will rattle around in your toolbox for the next 20 years and that thing will still be there I cannot be to tell you guys how absolutely awesome this is and how many doors this just opened for me and my uh creativity if you will but you know what's cool here guys this wrench that we just made is one of a limited quantity of customized Dan Pro Shop 10 mm ratcheting wrenches that's going to be available on Dan proshop ltd.com that's right a little bit of a sales pitch here you guys guys can get yourself a piece of history and let's be honest who doesn't need an extra 10 mm wrench laying around but you can get a customized laser etched Dan's Pro Shop 10 mil wrench by yours truly and while you're there check out the rest of the site hats t-shirts stickers Koozies whatever you want and now custom wrenches but if you're interested in one of these things don't lolly gag like I said limited quantity because like I mentioned earlier it's not the fastest thing in the world so production is limited and not to mention that they're wrenches they cost money so if you guys are interested in one of these things you better head over there right quick and grab them up but enough about me the king of the show the xtool i infrared laser module for the D1 Pro this thing is so cool and I know I'm just going to laser etch absolutely everything in the shop it's just so cool and the versatility with this thing not to mention all the attachments and stuff like like these leg risers and that rotary station that's available with this thing and like I mentioned earlier if you guys still just have the OE head on this thing go ahead and do yourself some uh some rigging up with this air system like I said dude it absolutely changes everything you can cut faster you can cut cleaner it's just so cool don't worry I will link all this stuff in the description including this fancy new IR module head so the original D1 Pro just the way it comes with everything the IR head the the power block that comes with it the parts to do this stuff on your own if you choose to but dude I cannot tell you how awesome this is and if you guys really are interested please check out all the links in the description because this can really change the way that you do things so don't forget to head on over to Dan Pro Shop ltd.com and grab your custom wrenches and hopefully you guys enjoyed this and we will see you next time

Channel: Dan’s Pro Shop

Views: 4,432

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Id: wnhjT7ax0aU

Length: 26min 51sec (1611 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 18 2023