The Atomstack X7 Pro Laser Engraver Is On Another Level

hey everyone it's David with Neo7CNC and earlier  this year early 2021 Atomstack reached out to me   and said hey would you like to review an A5  Pro desktop laser engraver and i jumped at   the opportunity because that was a new tool to  me since then i have used that machine a lot   and then i've done a review on a different type of  laser a different kind of footprint of a laser but   Atomstack reached back out to me recently and  said would you be interested in reviewing the X7   Pro and i said absolutely and i just thought it  was going to be a little bit of software updates   maybe some tweaks to the to the  assembly or something like that   but it was so much more and i'm happy to show you  those differences because it's pretty impressive when i received the X7 Pro it was well packed  just like the A5 Pro everything had its own   place nothing was rubbing against each other  things were actually bound together with kind   of like a saran wrap or a stretch wrap to keep  them from moving around in the box and they were   all nestled in their nice little foam pockets just  like the last Atomstack machine that i reviewed   this one has the touch screen it has the glass on  the laser shroud so those are a little bit more   sensitive components but they had no damage and  were well protected inside the box just like last   time the X7 Pro even has the corner protectors and  everything like that one little oopsie that i did   was when i was taking everything out of the box i  didn't grab everything that was nestled in there   because it's packaged so well that it's kind of  like a little easter egg hunt i ended up feeling   the weight of the box it didn't feel quite right  went back and found unfortunately found the the   touch screen that i had completely overlooked  down in the lower part of the packaging as well   as the power cord so i retrieved those and then  put the packaging aside and started the assembly all right so once i got it out of  the box i started putting it together   and it was pretty straightforward even though  i managed to mess that up somehow because i was   trying to move it to where the camera could see  what i was doing and i ended up flipping one of   the pieces and got it backwards so i had to take  it apart and do it again on a good day it's only   supposed to take you 15 to 20 minutes to put  it together i think that's a fair assessment   if i'm being honest with you guys it took me  about 30 minutes to put it together and that's   only because i messed up on a few things and kind  of had to dial in some of the wiring with the zip   ties and what not to make sure i had enough slack  in it to allow the machine to move in its full   area of motion once i got the the original  kind of the four piece frame put together   you start putting on the x-axis which is the axis  that or the y-axis is what moves front to back the   x-axis is what moves left or right and so you  have to put that on and roll it on and then you   put the legs and whatnot on and what i've what i  discovered uh what i think would be probably the   trickiest thing to do when it comes to assembly  um and it's it's really not that big of a deal but   the you have one motor that makes the whole bridge  or the gantry if you want to call it that go front   to back for the y-axis and those those sides of  motion are actually connected through a drive   shaft and two pulleys that engage timing belts  that run down the length of both of the y-axis   or the side frames the one thing that you would  want to do want to make pay special attention to   is when you put that on what i did was i rolled  the axis all the way to the back of the machine   where it kind of hits a stop and i set up one side  first so i did the side that has the motor on it   made sure the belt was tight when when you squeeze  the belt as it comes up and over the drive shaft   i kind of pinch it right there and it just  needs just a little bit of give and so once   i was satisfied with that i kept the i kept the  bridge at the rear of the machine and i installed   the second timing belt and made sure that  it had roughly the same tension on it and   made sure that it was at the same position on the  back of the frame so that that way when it moves   forward they're moving they're moving in sync you  don't want it to be slightly canted to one side   to where either the left or the right is is ahead  of the other side you want them to be as square to   the machine as possible that's just going to give  you better results and better precision when you   cut or doing the engravings once i got past that  it was moving on to kind of the white the x-axis   which is the left and right i noticed on mine that  that carriage even though it's pre-assembled from   the factory the the part that holds the laser  kind of had some play in it and i was kind of   puzzled by that but as i went through the  instruction guide it specifically has a section   on on that particular axis on how to fix that and  that's there's eccentric nuts that hold one of the   rollers it's got two rollers on top and one roller  on the bottom of the rail and you can adjust the   spacing of that bottom roller to remove that play  in that axis and all i had to do was rotate it   probably about 45 degrees and was able to snug  it up on the bottom of the extruded aluminum   and that play was gone you want to be  careful there not to do that too much   you don't want to put so much resistance on  that movement that you prematurely wear out   the rollers or you cause the stepper motor to work  harder than it needs to since this is not it is a   cnc machine of a sorts but it's not pushing on  material it's it's okay if it moves very freely   you just don't want it to have any sort of play  in it so just enough will be just right you don't   want to overdo that once i did that got the laser  installed you have to kind of shift one of the   brackets and that shows you that in the manual  to get to the right screw spacing depending on   how thick of items you're working on there are  some options in there but i just set it as the   manual said and it's been perfect for what i've  used it for so all in all the assembly was very   straightforward barring me not being able to  comprehend instructions for some period of time   for some reason and then the last thing was  putting the wire harness on it which is all   nicely bundled in this kind of spiral mesh wrap  and i had to play with it a little bit because   the the home sensor for the y-axis is actually  on the left side the bottom of the left side   of the machine on the the y-axis rail and it's  got a rather uh small plug that goes into that   and i had to adjust my where i was attaching  the wires with the zip tile to the frame   once or twice just to make sure i had enough reach  for the machine to be able to move its entire   range without being restricted by the wire so once  i got that done the assembly was basically over so let's talk about some of the features of the  x7 pro that make it so different from the a5 pro   the first is the fact that it has a dual  beam laser head on it and what that means   is typically your laser heads are going  to be 5 5.5 watts equivalent optical power   this machine is actually 10 watts because  it's using two different laser diodes to   affect the laser beam basically doubling the  beam it has one that's pointing down it's got   one that's pointing from the side and it has a  mirror that allows the one from that's pointing   straight down to go straight through and the  one that's coming in from the side to reflect   on the mirror and meet that other beam so you  get twice the laser energy in the same spot that sounds impressive to me but the results  that i got with the machine were even more   impressive i mean we'll get into that a little bit  later one other thing that's very notable uh on   on the website it actually says that you will  be able to expand the footprint of the machine   right now its effective area is 410 millimeters by  400 millimeters and you should be able to double   that by changing out some of the frame members  actually you could just make the frame wider   so you could end up doing of 800 by  400 or something like that that's   that's supposed to be coming out you could  certainly do that as a diy project but i think   they're going to be coming out with something to  facilitate that change as well they already have   some accessories a rotary for doing round objects  a lot of people like to do the insulated tumblers   different sort of litho panes different things  like that they have that available they also have   risers that you can put under the feet you could  use bricks you could use anything anything that's   precise enough if you had wooden blocks that  were cut to the same height then you could   just sit the machine on that and that would allow  you to do thicker materials underneath the laser   but they also have components that  you can buy to allow that as well the fit and finish on this machine is is even  better than the a5 was the extruded aluminum is is   well done the fasteners are well done everything  is anodized it's got nice graduation marks   on the y-axis and the x-axis so you have a rough  idea of where the job will land on the machine   if i can segue a little bit when  i set up my jobs in laser gerbil   typically they're a smaller job so what i what  i like to do is set the job in the center of the   work envelope of the machine so in laser gerbil  when it when you're doing your x and your y   i just put 200 and 200 because that's roughly  the center of the footprint of the machine or   the work area of the machine and that way i  know roughly where that job's going to land   and then i can go do a preview and then i  can line up my material as i need it to be that the little graduation  lines on the axis help with that   the biggest other difference is going to be  the controller before the controller was on   the back you didn't really need to do anything  with it other than plug the cables up to it   now that it's forward on the machine for a  good reason it's got the e-stop on it it's   got the power button it's got a reset button and  it's got the power connector the usb connector   and the micro sd slot so it makes sense for  that to be forward and then when you add the   fact that you've got the magnetically attachable  touch screen that just sticks to the controller   all of that kind of makes sense but all of  that is done exceptionally well great paint   a great great fit and finish on all the buttons  everything's nicely done it looks like they put   a lot of thought and time into developing  these products and i've been very impressed we've already kind of mentioned the fact that  it's got the controller with the the micro usb   card slot in it that allows you to run the  machine alone kind of in a standalone manner   you can go into laser laser gerbil or light burn  whatever program you're used to using and instead   of sending the job directly to the laser you can  just save it as a g-code file this way you can   just put it on the machine use the touch screen  interface select what you want to do and it's   very clean it's very well executed though there  is one typo on there which is it's just software   that's easy to correct overall the machine is a 50  watt rated machine that's not optical power again   like i mentioned before optical power is 10 watts  with the laser head but that's the most of any   machine that i've tested to date in the led based  desktop laser engraver kind of area of operation one of the other neat features that the x7 pro has  is it's going to have the ability to use wi-fi to   communicate with your mobile device so you would  be able to control the machine gets get probably   status job status from it remotely over wi-fi  that feature is not yet available it's supposed   to be released sometime in december of 2021 but i  was unable to test that as it's not released yet all right so this is one of my favorite parts  i always like showing off what i was able to   do with the machine and this one is going to  be different and we'll get to that i'm going   to save the best for last but let's start with  the the low hanging fruit the stuff that i've   done on all the machines that i've tested and you  know me by now if you've seen any of these videos   i use these four by four inch or 100 millimeter  by 100 millimeter coaster blanks from amazon as   a good tester this is 2.62 2.7 millimeter plywood  and i was able to blow a hole right through it in   about one quarter of the time that it would  take me with the other machines that i've tested   um it it takes me uh before it would take me  eight passes eight trips around here to actually   burn through this this one took three passes  and i was actually able to do it in two passes   but that material was a little bit different it  wasn't the same wood grain it had a different   color to it and and that just goes back to what  i've said in all the my laser review videos   is the material is going to have a variance  it's going to act differently depending on   which batch you get when you buy it different  things like that and so you might have to play   with it a little bit to dial it in but i was able  to consistently get three passes and get through   it but on occasion i did get it in two passes  but it really just depended on the wood quality   a new material that i added this time is like this  nylon it's almost like a cordura fabric and i was   able to it does a nice job of melting the edge  so it doesn't it doesn't fray and i'm going to   put all the recipes and everything down the side  like i usually do but this was 800 millimeters   a minute uh 100 power and this was two passes  and it basically melted it and it was almost   like it was embossed and then you could just like  knock it out so that turned out good if you're   cutting out things for clothes or making  backpacks or different things like that   another new material was six millimeter thick  poplar and i was able to get through this   in the time that it used to take me with the old  lasers to get through the thin material i was able   to get through the thick material so this was uh  800 millimeters a minute 100 percent power this   was eight passes and again this is six millimeter  or point two three six inches of just solid   poplar wood while i was on the wood track i  said well what about some 12 millimeter plywood   if you look online at the specs for this  machine it should be able to do 20 millimeters   i think they're using something like a basswood  or some other type of softer wood i didn't have   any um 20 millimeter poplar to try and but i  did try this 12 millimeter baltic birch plywood   and i did 800 millimeters a minute 100 power  i did 18 passes just as a guess and i got   almost nine and a half millimeters  through the material i have no doubt   sorry about that i have no doubt that if i kept  going uh with the number of passes or slowed down   the speed that i could burn through this but uh  that's just to show you how capable this laser is   went ahead and did some very thick  aluminum it's almost like a little   like a keychain tag right here if i had to  guess this is like three millimeters or so i should know better to have these with me 3.3 millimeter leather i was able to get  through that i don't remember the recipe   for that one but it does work um we've seen this  before this has almost become another standard   job but this uh this cool piece of clip art that  i found online uh the first one the darker one was   three thousand millimeters a minute fifty five  percent power one pass i call this over burned   um you'll see in the close-up picture  it's a little bit washed out on the detail   especially around the eyes but it does look cool  but i think it needed to be a little bit lighter   i ran it again this time same  speed 3000 millimeters a minute   25 power one pass both of these took 18 minutes  to do and this one is almost a little bit faded   um but still very legible so the sweet pot  the sweet spot would be somewhere between 55   and 25 percent or you could slow down the speed  to play with it and figure out what works best this was an easy one this is some real thick   cardboard almost like a photo  mailer for the postal service   blew through that 800 millimeters a minute 100  power i did that in two passes slower speed   you should easily get through that in one pass  i did my normal this is a test craft paper tag   i was able to do it in 1500 millimeters a minute  100 power one pass super sharp detail on that   um let's see uh something that i've used in the  past that's had mixed results is these aluminum   black painted business card blanks now this this  machine has enough power that it just obliterated   the paint off of here on some of the ones that  i've done before you can actually see where it's   kind of just dulled the color but this really took  it down to metal and this was 200 millimeters a   minute sorry 2000 millimeters a minute 100  power one pass took five minutes to do that   so that was a very very better result than  i've seen before the other thing that i did was   anodized aluminum anodized aluminum responds  very well to these desktop laser engravers   and i picked out a design that was super sharp  on these little dog tags if you will this skull   is like 30 millimeters by 20 probably 20 yeah 20  millimeters or so wide and the detail on here is   just amazing if the pictures will do it justice my  daughter took a fancy to that and i made her one one thing that i have had mixed results on in the  past was stainless steel and i've gotten a lot of   questions about stainless steel i feel confident  in saying that this laser has no problem with   stainless steel at least in this thickness this  is this is relatively thin this is 0.6 millimeters   something like that so it's pretty it's pretty  fan this is like another business card blank   um but i put the recipe on the back in this you'll  find this interesting 2000 millimeters a minute   100 power one pass and i wrote focused and the  reason i wrote focus is i got so excited to try   this this was the second one the first one was  unfocused and so same recipe but it has different   colors in it it starts at a blue and kind of fades  up to a green then goes to a yellow and then a red   and then almost a black at the top so as the  reason it did that was because as this is soaking   up heat and the laser is working on it it ended  up getting a bow in it and so it kind of came   up towards the laser and pulled it out of focus  and so that it that changed the amount of heat   that was getting into it which changed the  color so that actually turned out really neat   and you can see on the last i did this job  three times you can see on the last one   which i don't know if it's this one i guess it was  this one when the laser is done with the job and   it moves to go home it actually knocks the laser  cord or the stainless card off of the little stand   that i had it on and that's because it bowed up  so much that it hit the bottom of the head as it   was moving off to the home position so that's how  much warpage we basically created with the laser one thing that i haven't tested before and  i've gotten some questions on it is acrylic   and someone asked about clear acrylic  um i didn't have any to to test i did   try testing a kind of a light green acrylic  and had mediocre results in engraving shore   um cutting i didn't have good success with  that but i tried it with this one and i had   a lot of success and so i was able to cut out  this uh this is one of the sample pieces that   came with the machine and using one of their  recipes they had three different recipes for   this 2.8 millimeter acrylic and i probably use  the the most conservative as far as putting the   number of passes or the speed or whatever and this  this was two passes 100 power i don't remember   exactly what the speed was it might have been  210 millimeters a minute or something like that   but it it did it in two passes it blew through  this and it blew through this and actually left   a mark on the little on the little metal mat that  they sent with the laser to keep you from harming   your tabletop or whatever so i was able to back  um the only thing i didn't like about this it went   through it just fine but there it seemed to be  that it did a lot of melting on that second pass   which doesn't smell real good but it also kind  of dulls the shininess of it so i ran it again in   one pass this time and got much better results the  parts the inside pieces were just kind of hanging   in there and i was able to just push them out with  my finger and this is much sharper than the other   one and also doesn't have the over burn that the  first one has so that acrylic was no problem at   all i think you would want to dial that in to  get just enough to to get through the material   without melting it and that's going to  be a function of the power and the speed i'm going to save the best one for last but  this is one that actually this is a sample image   that actually came on the micro sd card that  came with the laser and i just pulled it into   light burn and created a job and instead  of sending it directly to the laser   i saved it to the the memory card and then ran  the laser kind of in offline mode and that way   i could test that functionality out very easy  to use even allows you to do multiple copies and   this was done 3 000 millimeters a minute 35  percent power and one pass it's a little bit   light i could have gone either slower or bumped up  the power and that would have made it a little bit   more readable but the level of detail that's in  this the image that they provided is pretty good   and and i'll put it i'll put  a picture in picture here the   the selection that they sent was rather was  rather interesting but it's a lot of fun and   i would just pick this one because it looked like  it had the most kind of feathery detail to it but   that turned out great so as i was thinking  what can we do next what material can i try   the anodized stuff is fun the stainless is fun and  i was happy with the results that i got with this   particular machine but i knew of another material  that you can kind of tickle it with some heat and   you can change its color and that is titanium  but this is grade 5 (titanium) 1/8 of an inch titanium   so that's 3.33 millimeters roughly and so i wanted  to see what it could do to that so i just made up   a job i just simply typed test in some font and  tried it and it left a mark it's not the most   readable it's kind of like the titanium is kind  of a dull gray and the text is kind of a darker   dull gray but it's very sharp you can't feel it  at all it just it just left a color change in the   material and so i thought about it overnight  i'm like i want to try that again because   if you've ever tinkered around with titanium  and titanium shavings you can light them on fire   and they will kind of get excited and burn  and titanium gives off this brilliant white   when you're especially when you're sanding  it on a belt sander or something like that   so i've always liked working with the material  and so i did another job and i'll put the recipe   up here and i really put the heat into it this  time i did five passes 100% power and i'd not   i'll put up here what the speed was but as i  just ran the job and i was doing something on   my computer and i started hearing crackling and  i'm like did i fry some electronics somewhere   this you know what's going on and i looked at  the machine and i could actually see the laser   crackling the titanium and i'm like okay this  is getting interesting so as soon as it got done   i was like holy moly what what a mark it put  on there but it's not just like the first mark   that's just kind of a color change it actually  affected the material i can feel that mark on   here it's in the material and it's clean i could  i think i might actually try doing a small qr code   because i think it would be super readable but i  was very impressed that this laser was capable of   putting enough heat into it to actually ablate  some of the material on it that's pretty big all right so let's talk pros and cons i'll start  with the pros uh the build quality of the X7   is great it's just as good as the a5 was probably  even better the laser focus set knob that's a huge   improvement over the A5 it just makes it that much  easier and quicker to set and also the fact that   it's a fixed focus laser and you just use the  two millimeter spacer card to kind of get your   set focus distance that just makes it so  convenient and easy the fact that the machine   is expandable you can actually make it longer  to do you know 400 by 800-ish millimeter jobs   that's an add-on kit that you have to buy from  atomstack but the fact that you can do that that's   pretty impressive uh the touchscreen they've taken  the design and kind of upped it off by an order of   magnitude i would say adding the e-stop the on  off button the reset button you know being able   to use it offline kind of as a standalone machine  with the touch screen those are all great features   and the fact that it's got the tilt sensor  from a safety standpoint in the case that it   hits something knocks itself off the table or  whatever it will stop so those are all great   cons and i'm really kind of nitpicking here  because i really do think the machine is fantastic   but cons the wire management specifically  on the home switch on the y-axis i think i   mentioned this earlier i'll try to show you  a picture of what i'm talking about in here   but it's just kind of it's just hard to attach  the cable in a way that you know you're not going   to put too much added stress on the little  pigtail that comes out to go to that switch   it's just something to be mindful of wire  management is always tough on any kind of machine   so i'm not knocking anybody it's i've seen this  across multiple machines cnc machines all kinds   of stuff it's just it's just kind of inherent  with the territory of some sort of move moving   machine is managing the wiring it can kind of  be a bummer that i was able to unable to test   the wi-fi functionality yet you know that's  a software thing that's coming down the pipe   the hardware is already in the system but i would  have loved to have been able to test that feature   some might balk at the cost i think last i looked  it was $599 for the unit you may be able to catch   it on sale who knows i'll have links down below to  anything that i can find that's available now feel   free to check those out but for what i've seen  the laser do that's fairly impressive for a led   based desktop type laser that's well capable of to  anything that i've seen before and i've you know   i've even the A5 at the time was like 300 mark or  something like that but the advancements on this   machine you'll have to decide whether that makes  sense or not but it is a very capable machine well i hope you enjoyed the review  of the X7 Pro from Atomstack   it's a very impressive little machine  as always i'll have links down below to   all the resources i used in the video let me  know what you think about the machine down below   what about the titanium i think that's super  cool but i thank you for watching the video   thanks for Atomstack for sending me the  machine to review and we'll see you next time

Channel: Neo7CNC

Views: 47,883

Keywords: diy cnc, diy cnc machine, cnc machine, Mach3, Homemade, Home, Made, CNC, Router, DIY, Neo7.com, Neo7cnc.com, Milling, Machine, Mill, Stepper, Motor, 80/20, Aluminum, Hobby, Proximity, Sensor, Limit, THK, Actuator, Linear Bearing, NSK, IKO, Dust Hood, Ballscrew, Servo, Neo7cnc, mic-6, mister, neo7cnc, maker, make, weekend projects, DIY projects, pneumatic, david burrell

Id: OPrD_J2TEeY

Length: 30min 18sec (1818 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 14 2021