XTOOL F1 and RA2 Pro Rotary Module Guide: Become A Tumbler Engraving Master (+ Upgrades and More!)

[Music] in a previous video I showed you guys how to get started with the X tool F1 in the flat configuration mode and in this video we're going to be doing a deep dive into using the F1 with the ra2 pro rotary module now I've got lots of different graphics and work pieces for us to get through so naturally we're going to run into some different challenges but don't worry we'll solve all of those problems together plus I've got some new upgrades for the ra2 and the F1 and towards the end of this video I'll even show you guys how to process some round work pieces without the use of the ra2 so keep watching to the end let's go so this right here is the X tool R2 Pro and you can see that I have it assembled in Chuck mode the rollers have been removed and this is the recommended configuration to use the ra2 pro with the X tool F1 now although this is the recommended configuration there are some limitations to using the ra2 pro with the X tool F1 for example if you have one of these pretty generic looking 12 O mugs with a handle which is by no means a very large mug you're going to find that the handle will come in contact with the base of the ra2 and of course then you can't rotate this workpiece completely around it just limits the amount of space that you can process on this piece and even if you flip the base over that handle is still going hit the table below another limitation with the ra2 is processing work pieces with a taper as you can see this wine tumbler has a slight taper to the surface and the only way to get this parallel with the laser is to tilt the ra2 up on one end now you can try and do this by finding some sort of household item and imprecisely wedging it under the base but I do have a better solution for this that I'll show you guys later however as is without any further modification this is just something that's kind of kind of difficult to do with the ra2 on its own and one other thing I want to point out about the R2 is that if you're using this with the X tool F1 make sure you get the right cable if you bought the re2 and the listing was for the D1 D1 Pro or If you inherited an re2 from somebody else and you don't have this cable you can buy this separately on the xtool website I'll put a link in the video description down below getting the rotary module set up with the F1 is pretty easy you can just remove that Center base plate from the X tool F1 place it beside the machine so if you're looking at it from the front like this it'll go on the right hand side and just place your rotary module on top there are some alignment marks on the base of the X tool F1 we'll line up the front edge of your ra2 and that should get the center axis of rotation in line with the center of the f1's laser then we can just plug in the rotting module into the side of the F1 and we'll process a sample job here so this is something very simple I've got a tumbler it's got a regular cylindrical top to it with no handle so this should work very nicely with the ra2 unmodified I have the Chuck Jaws grabbing the inside of the tumbler and I've done my best here to line it up by ey so that the tumbler is not crooked and I've also got it lined up with those alignment marks at the front of the machine now I want to move this cylindrical face closer to the center of the machine and while doing that I need to pay attention to a few things the alignment marks and on the side here you'll see that the steper motor starts to run into the back of the X tool F1 I've got a solution for that also I'll show you guys later but for now the simplest thing I can do is flip the Tumblr around grab it from the bottom of the tumbler on the outside face and then move the whole ra2 back and go through the process again of lining it up with those alignment marks be careful not to move it too far back you'll notice that it might start to wobble a little bit you'll want to move it far enough to the left where the rotary module is stable then we can turn the F1 on on and use the knob at the side of the machine to manually focus the laser on the top surface of your tumbler in X tool creative space you can see the F1 is connected and I'm going to use the drop down menu to select laser cylindrical and this will change our workspace a little bit in X tool creative space you can see you've got this green bar up at the top and you have an Arrow showing the direction of rotation for the rotary module I'll use the buttons on the side to click on Chuck because of course we have it in the Chuck configuration and then we can go and use the image button on the left and import an image I've got that nice matte Green Tumblr so I went with one of these Stanley vectors and I just want to point out that I'm not in the business of selling trademarked or copyrighted logos on any sort of merchandise I just like picking these logos for fun for these videos when the color scheme of the workpiece goes nicely with a particular logo anyway so I use the control a shortcut to select the entire logo rotate it around I've selected engrave on the right hand side and one of the things that we need to input into X tool creative space is the diameter of our workpiece it's always easier to take that measurement before the workpiece is on the Chuck and you have everything aligned so don't be like me and forget but either way I've got the diameter I'm going to enter into the diameter box and the perimeter will be automatically calculated then I can select all of the elements again and over on the right hand side select blue light laser set the power to 80% set the speed to 400 millim per second grab a single pass and we're going to use 300 lines per CM then I'll make a last minute decision here to resize the logo so I'll set the width to 30 mm I'll reposition it slightly biased to the left and before we frame this graphic take one more look at the direction in which I've rotated this image to match the orientation of my tumbler when I have it grip from the bottom when I hit that framing button the X tool F1 will frame the image on the surface as it rotates the workpiece I'm happy with the size and position so I'll hit process and then we can start the job don't forget to wear laser safety glasses while you're working with the ra2 because the lid will be open on my website embracing docomo that attenuate both blue and IR laser light so it's very convenient because you do not have to switch back and forth between two separate pairs of glasses while you're operating this machine with the cover open just another friendly reminder not to have pets kids or other people around who are not wearing the proper protective eyewear now this staning graphic turned out looking amazing but there is a way to make it look even better now I can't take credit for this method I did see it on the xtool official YouTube channel what they tell you to do is grab the image select it all again hit the IR button so we're going to process this same image twice we're going to set the IR laser power to 40% leave the speed at 400 mm/s and leave the lines per centimeter at 300 now it's extremely important that between these processes you did not touch the tumbler you do not want to disturb its position it needs to be in the exact same spot the IR laser is going to completely overlap the blue laser job and it's going to result in a much brighter graphic personally I think it brings so much more life to that image and ever since finding out about this process I do this on all of my tumblers now I think that looks really sharp and the F1 having both the blue and IR laser makes that so easy to accomplish so that covers a typical and easy use case on the X2 F1 but if you guys are familiar with my videos you know I don't stop there now let's have a look at a simple and free modification to the ra2 to increase its flexibility so earlier I showed you the connector on the side of the ra2 hitting the frame of the F1 when we're trying to move the rotary module in towards the middle of the F1 we can fix this problem by rotating the motor to the top of the ra2 to do this we'll Begin by removing the two screws at the bottom rear of the ra2 and that will disconnect the base from the rest of the rotary module then we need to remove the chuck and the belt and this can be done by removing the two screws that can be accessed from the top of the bearing block that holds the Chuck in place we'll put those aside and then we'll have another look at the back of the ra2 module so on the back there's a cover and it's got three of these Flathead screws so remove those three screws and the rear cover will pop off and once you get that cover off you'll find another belt on the inside on the motor shaft there are two pulleys there's the one that the belt is connected to and there's one on top the second one where the belt was connected to that we already removed now I'm going to be removing this second pulley on top but looking back at this video footage I really don't think that it's even necessary so you should be able to skip this step but regardless there's an access window at the bottom of the housing and this top pulley has two grub screws that hold it in place so you can access them through the access window and the pulley will just simply slip off next thing I'm going to do is remove these four screws holding the motor in place and once those four screws are removed you'll find that the motor will completely pop out of the housing and you're just going to rotate it 90 degrees so the connector is now facing the top of the module make sure you get the belt back in place and when you do this you'll notice that you're going to have to pull the motor over to get the holes to line up because there is some tension on that belt at this point we'll just be installing everything in the reverse order if you did remove the pulley that I said was completely optional to remove when you go to put a back on just make sure you line up one of the grub screws with the flat on the motor shaft and in this case here I've aligned the flat with the AIS window in the bottom put the grub screw on top to align with the window and I'll tighten it down rotate at 90° and tighten up the second grub screw then I can grab the back cover plate we'll slip that back on top and replace the three Flathead screws that hold the cover in place and by the way if you guys are looking for this awesome Electric screwdriver that I'm using for some of this assembly and disassembly I'll put a link to that in the video description down below as well now it's time to put the Chuck body back on top you'll want to slip the belt over top of the pulleys before you tighten down these screws because there is some tension on that belt and you won't be able to get it back on the other way around and so that's it now you got the connector on top and it won't get in our way anymore now we can have a look at an upgrade that I designed for the r82 pro that works specifically with the X tool F1 what it is is a riser and tilt mechanism that will allow us to process work pieces with handles larger diameters as well as tapered surfaces and more it also makes alignment super easy so let's get started with installing this the kit comes with these following parts on the Le hand side you can see some Riser feet and these will get installed under the base of the X tool F1 they come equipped with these non-slip feet so your machine will not slide around and we'll have a look at those a little further in a moment for now let's focus on the Riser and tilt mechanism this is what's going to allow us to use bigger work pieces with handles as well as tilting them so that we can get those tapered surfaces parallel with our laser in the small bag here is all of the hardware that we're going to need to get this thing installed so we'll Begin by separating out the hardware and we need to grab these four square nuts these Square nuts will slide into the slots on the base of the ra2 getting them in the slots is pretty easy I would start on this side of the base where you have easy access to the slots you can just simply put the nuts down on top of the base and use a screwdriver to drag the nuts into the channel now if you find the nut gets a little bit stuck try flipping it over because you might have a small bur from the thread on that nut just getting in the way they have to be a very snug fit inside of these channels so they don't rotate when we go to screw down the ra2 Tilt mechanism so now you can see see we've got the tilt base one side is labeled Chuck side and that is going to face this side of the ra2 base with the cutouts where the rollers used to get bolted down it's extremely important that you get this orientation correct because the ra2 base is actually not symmetrical then we can take our M3 by10 socket head cap screws with the washers we can place them through the Tilt mechanism and start threading them into those Square nuts wring these screws all the way down will lock the Tilt mechanism to the metal base and by backing them off half a turn you can now Slide the Tilt mechanism back and forth along the base I'm going to slide it to the right hand side of the ra2 metal base and I'm going to align the front faces of the Tilt mechanism with the front face of the base this will make sure that the Tilt mechanism is properly aligned and squared up with that base but if you do have a speed square like the blue one that I just had in the video there that just makes it even even easier now we can Bolt the rotary module on top and the two holes in the bottom of that module where it used to get bolted to the metal base are going to be used to mount it to the Tilt mechanism and you can see that I've got the chuck on the side of the Tilt mechanism that says Chuck side and we're going to be reusing these original two screws that again used to bolt the module to the metal base are now going to be used to mount the module to the tilt mechanism now you'll be able to swivel your entire rotary module so you can process work pieces with tapered faces to lock the module at a particular angle there's just one screw at the bottom that you have to tighten the nut and bolt at the top should not have to be adjusted under normal circumstances the unit pivots around this top bolt so it should only be tight enough that when the bottom bolt is loose the unit can still swivel and it's not wobbling around we'll be setting some work pieces up in a minute it but for now let's get those Riser feet installed on the bottom of the F1 to do that we'll Begin by removing the fixture plate from the bottom of the X tool F1 because we have to tip the machine on its side and we don't want that plate falling over at the bottom of the X tool F1 you'll find four M4 threaded holes and included in the kit are four M4 by10 socket head cap screws the screws fit through the Riser feet and thread into the bottom of the X tool F1 and there's no right or wrong orientation here you can install them any which direction that you want the only important thing to pay attention to here is that the front of this Riser foot should be flush with the front of that base and the feet aren't sitting on top or squishing those rubber pads that the F1 used to sit on the feet can be left in place permanently for regular flat cutting and Engraving just make sure that these rubber pads on the bottom of the fixture plate aren't hitting the Riser feet this could result in the fixture plate sitting up slightly higher than the B face and to fix that it usually just requires rotating the plate 90° so that covers the Tilt mechanism but while we're working on the ra2 I've got one more modification to make your life even easier and that's going to be a back stop and Bubble Level holder kit so all I need to do to install this back stop is remove the three Chuck draws the back stop will then slip over and the kit that I sell on my website comes with two different size back stops this is the smaller of the two and then we can just reinstall our Chuck Jaws so now when we're setting up these tumblers and gripping them from the inside we can just bottom them out on the back stop and we know that it's perfectly aligned and that tumbler will no longer wobble while it spins so we've taken away the guesswork there and now we've got the Bubble Level holder so the Bubble Level that comes with the X tool r82 pro just slips into the holder and now it's very easy to mount and align on the top of your cylindrical workpiece so now you can see in combination with the ra2 Tilt mechanism I've got the surface of the tapered tumbler level and I'm just going to tighten that one screw on the front of the Tilt mechanism everything's locked in place and we've got a perfect alignment of that workpiece the same concept applies to these mugs with a handle that we previously would not have been able to process I've got it chucked up against the back stop the Bubble Level shows that the engravable surface is level and I've used the single screw at the front of the Tilt mechanism to lock it in place now we can get full rotation without the handle hitting the face so this is yet another workpiece that we've now unlocked now that you've seen what this upgrade is all about let's take a look at setting it up with the X tool F1 and processing some example jobs I've removed the fixture plate and we're going to be sliding the re2 base in between the two Riser feet now those two alignment marks on the top of the frame were what we were previously using to line up our ra2 but now it's even easier we're just going to take the front face of the R2 base and we're going to butt it up against the back face of that Riser foot now the center axis of rotation is perfectly aligned with the center of the F1 now we can slide this unit in and out and as long as we maintain contact between those two faces the center axis of rotation will always be perfectly aligned with the F1 it takes away all that guess work and even with the Tilt kit you can see here that when we've rotated that motor so the connector is on top it will still pass inside of the frame so now we have maximum flexibility with this rotary module one other thing I want to demonstrate here is that when we loosen off the front screw for the ra2 Tilt mechanism you can see how far we can tilt this entire rotary module back and so if we had those small grippers for things like Rings or other small pieces of round jewelry you can actually rotate it far enough upwards that you could process the inside of a ring as well but for now we'll stick to these tumblers and we'll go back to this red mug with the handle I've got it set up in the Chuck and I've push the whole module forward so now this piece can be rotated around 360° with no interference and this previously would not have been possible the Bubble Level with the Bubble Level holder still fits inside of the frame so again everything is perfectly compatible here and going back to the wine tumbler with the tapered surface you can see that I've tilted the ra2 Tilt mechanism downwards I've got the Bubble Level on that surface it's parallel with the frame of the machine and then we can use the manual adjustment knob and focus the laser on that surface since we've got a pink wine Tumblr setup what goes better with pink than a Barbie logo and so I've brought in a Barbie logo into X2 creative space I've clicked on the Chuck mode button I've set the diameter to 79 mm and we're going to frame up this graphic now this Tumblr doesn't have a handle so we can kind of put the logo anywhere we don't have to place it with respect to a handle and so when we frame it you can see that the direction of rotation is the same direction that's indicated in X2 creative space with the green line at the top of your workspace and that Arrow going to use the same blue laser settings as the first Tumblr example so we got 80% power 400 mm/s and 300 lines per cenm we'll put on our laser safety glasses and we'll process this job the quick and easy setup with the Tilt mechanism as well as the back stop will ensure that we get the absolute best result on this tapered surface and you can see that when it's done the logo looks really nice but it is kind of dark so we'll hit it with the IR laser in a moment but you can also see in this shot the timing mark that I added with a sharpie and how it lines up with the left hand side of that Barbie graphic and that just represents that green bar at the top of the workspace in xtool Creative space just a reminder not to disturb that tumbler leave it completely as is do not touch it go back into into X tool creative space switch over to the IR laser change it to 40% power leave it at 400 mm/s and 300 lines per CM rerun the job and you'll see it completely transform that very dark looking Barbie logo into a nice bright and shiny Barbie logo personally I think this two-step lasering process takes these tumblers to the next level you'll still want to clean up the tumbler with some soap and water to get rid of any residue along the edges of the engraving you can see I'll wipe a little bit away with my thumb and that'll just clean it up even further but after properly wiping it down this is the final result and you can just see how crisp and sharp that engraving turned out this is absolutely a testament to how well the xtool F1 performs as well as having a really tight and precise setup the other nice thing is that if you're running a business it makes this setup really quick and easy so it saves you time and money okay so now back to this red mug with with the handle and you can see this one here has got a bit of a lip on the inside so I think it's going to be best to grip this mug from the outside rather than the inside not every workpiece is going to be the same and as you gain more experience you'll pick up on the best way to do things as well as some other best practices like cleaning your work pieces if you've been handling them a lot personally I like to use 70% isopropyl alcohol to wipe away the oils from fingerprints I've now placed the base back in between the two Riser feet and buted up the front edge of the base to the back edge of that foot I've used the Tilt mechanism to rotate the mug up so the engravable surface is parallel with our laser and I've got the mug centered so it can be rotated a full 360° and the mug is roughly in the position where I'm going to be putting my graphic now again I'm using the knob on the side of the machine to manually focus the laser on that top surface and Back in X tool creative space I've brought in a a vector logo I'm going to rotate the logo 90° so it's in the same orientation as the mug from when you're looking at it from the front of the machine and I'm going to resize it and drag that logo up towards the edge of that green bar with the logo selected I'll now head over to the right hand side make sure we're in the blue light laser setting go with our typical settings of 80% power 400 mm/s and 300 lines per CM this red mug has a outer diameter of 87.5 mm so I'll enter that into the diameter field I'll press the framing button and we can take a look at the position of the framing with respect to the position of the handle use my Sharpie and Mark a position in the 12:00 position so the top of the mug and then I'm going to eyeball where the framing ended up and that's going to give me some sense of how big that graphic is going to be and where it's going to fall on the mug with respect to the handle alternatively I also know that in xtool Creative space I set the width of the logo to about 40 mm and so I can use my digital caliper set to 40 mm to get some sense of the size of that graphic because for this mug I'm going to engrave both sides I don't want this first graphic wrapping around too far because the second one I want on the opposite side of the mug once I'm happy with that position I'll come back into X tool creative space press process and we'll start this job but not without another reminder to please wear your laser safety glasses while you're doing this in most of these video examples I've got the lid up higher than what it needs to be for the purpose of filming now for you guys you can lower the lid quite a bit more to reduce the amount of laser Reflections coming off that surface just make sure it doesn't hit the rotary module while it's rotating otherwise that can ruin the job okay so the blue light job is complete we're going to again switch over to the IR laser power for the IR at 40% speed at 400 mm/s 300 lines per CM do not touch the workpiece just hit go and in a few minutes the one side of the mug is now complete for those of you guys who aren't Automotive or racing fans you may not recognize this logo but it's the logo for the Corvette racing team and I think it looks great on this red mug but we're not going to remove it just yet because I want to show you guys how I'm going to position and size the logo for the other side of this mug and tool creative space I brought in the Corvette script along with the Corvette emblem and the emblem is a raster image the script is a vector and so what I've done here is I've edited the image to remove the white space so it's easier to see through that raster image and I'm going to try and match the height of these two logos together to the height of that skull that we just had engraved I wanted the heights of these two Graphics to be roughly the same so the engraving on the front and the back of the mug more or less matches in size since the Corvette script is a vector image I can select it separately and input our typical engraving settings but you'll notice that if you select a raster image in this case the Corvette emblem you'll see that on the right hand side it will ask you for different settings such as dot duration in micros seconds and so we're going to turn this into a vector image right inside of X tool creative space so if you click on the image itself and then press the Trace image button it will attempt to trace this black and white image and turn it into a vector what you want to look for is some weird double lines like I just showed you there and you can play around with these sliders to get rid of any sort of weird double lines so you get a nice clean trace and now that it's a vector logo you can select it and you can input all of our typical settings for Engraving these tumblers I'm going to resize both of these Graphics ever so slightly and I'm going to place them close to that green rotation line at the top but one other thing to watch out for here is that after you convert an image from raster to Vector the raster image still exists underneath I've selected the vector image that sits on top and for good measure I'll also take that Corvette script and I'm going to move it to the second layer and then I've hidden that second layer which exposes the original raster image underneath which I'll click on and then just delete it I want to make sure the raster image gets deleted so it doesn't end up getting being processed inside of your job now we can frame up this graphic and again I'm going to use my Sharpie on the bottom of the mug to try and get a feel for where this logo is going to end up because I want it opposite of the original skull logo that we just did so they line up nicely on opposite sides of the mug you'll also obviously want to make sure that during the framing process the handle doesn't get in the way and once I'm happy with that position I'll press the process button and get this job started after 5 or 6 minutes the blue laser job is done this thing's looking pretty promising so we'll head back into X tool creative space we can use the control a shortcut to select both of the graphics at the same time and since they're both Vector images we can change the parameters to the IR laser again 40% power 400 MM per second speed 300 lines per centimeter and you'll end up with a very bright and beautiful logo and if you put the two side by side on the Le hand side just the blue laser on the right hand side blue plus IR you can clearly see the difference of course this two-step process will double the amount of time it takes to process the job but in my opinion it's absolutely worth it it actually sounds kind of cheesy but the results are so good that it actually makes me excited about doing these tumblers again now I've got this fourth example and it's a black tumbler that's quite long and it's got straight cylindrical faces just like the red mugs so I'm not going to have to make any adjustments to the Tilt mechanism one thing I do want to point out though is when I say that these faces are Level you want to make it level with your frame of the X tool F1 so that means the position of the bubble should be in the same spot whether you put the Bubble Level on your workpiece or on your frame this is what I mean by them being level relative to one another one of the things included with the ra2 pro is this rolling steady rest and we can place it under the free can delevered end of our long tumbler you want it just touching the surface of the tumbler you don't want it pressing up and causing any sort of misalignment or wobbling while the tumbler is rolling and that's going to keep it from sagging during the processing of this job in this next job I've got this Vector Red Bull logo and when we go to select engrave you'll see that some of it is black and there is a portion of it that is purple you might come across Vector files that have multiple outlines shapes or layers to them and so what I need to do here is get rid of this purple shape now I can't just delete it because the circle inside of the red bull logo is actually a full circle and those two bulls on either side will then get blended into the circle so what I'm going to do here is select the circle select the two purple shapes and use the combine feature so it's a button at the top there and subtract those shapes we now end up with a white outline around those two bulls so they appear to be on top of the black circle now I've simply rotated the logo resized it entered in the diameter of this tumbler which is 87.3 MM head on over into the engraving settings and again we're going to be using our typical settings here of 80% power 400 mm/s and 300 lines per CM there's no handle on this workpiece so we do not have to index it in the framing I'm happy with the position where it is in the roughly middle of this tumbler and we'll go ahead and process this job while this job is finishing up if you guys haven't already subscribed to my Channel please consider hitting the Subscribe button down below it's a great way to show support and appreciation for these very thorough and timec consuming videos that I put together now just like the other examples we will not be touching the workpiece Do Not Disturb it we'll go back into xtool creative space we're going to select the IR laser set the power to 40% leave the speed at 400 mm/s and leave the lines per centimeter at 300 and now will reprocess the job with the IR laser the main reason I wanted to show you guys this example was to demonstrate the compatibility of the Tilt mechanism with the steady rest and just show you guys how you can better support long work pieces with the ra2 steady rest it keeps your workpiece super stable and as you can see all of the very small and fine details in this logo came out looking perfect if there was any sort of shaking or wobbling those very fine details might be blurry or they might not even show up at all this setup here can process work pieces up to about 100 mm in diameter and this one does not have a handle it's just over 100 at about 101 mm so let's see how we can set this thing up inside of the X tool F1 right now I've got the larger of the two back stops installed and I'll be gripping the inside of this mug I'll push the work piece to the left while keeping the front face of the metal base in contact with the rear face of the Riser so we've got the center axis of rotation aligned with the center of the laser alternatively I could have flipped this piece around gripped it from the bottom of the mug and then moved the workpiece further to the right to achieve the same result in either case it's a long piece so I'll be using the steady rest and then I'll try and focus the laser on the top surface but just as we get into Focus we're going to hit the upper limit of travel on the F1 you'll see the two laser dots shift and at the top of the machine it might be a little hard to see in this video clip but the laser head of the F1 will twist a little bit and come to an abrupt stop in this circumstance I would lower the laser head just a touch before it gets twisted up the focusing dots may only end up a hair off from one another and you'll still end up with a nice sharp looking engrave on your workpiece if you're working with these big round work pieces you may not need the ra2 after all if you can limit yourself to engraving small to medium siiz graphics on my website I've got these V block fixtures and they fit into the bottom of the F1 and you can simply rest your round workpiece on top of it and it will keep it centered long work pieces might need some extra support at the back and you can use the steady rest to achieve that and then you can make sure their level smaller shorter work pieces will balance on their own and you can even put mugs with handles on top with these larger diameter mugs we can take advantage of the surface being a closer approximation of a flat surface it's a similar concept to the Earth having such a large diameter that the ground below you appears to be flat to test the limits of how far we can engrave down this curved surface I've taped a metal business card to the face of this large mug I'll use the steady rest to lift the bottom of the mug so that it is parallel front to back with respect to the X tool F1 then I'll set the focus on the top of the business card but what I'm going to do here is I'm going to actually make it slightly out of focus I'm going to focus it a little lower than this surface I'm going to try and split the difference between the highest and lowest point on this business card so the focus is somewhere in between next tool creative space we'll switch back to laser flat because we do not have the rotary module plugged in anymore then it import this template that will get sent to you by email if you purchase the physical fixture from my website you'll see that it did not scale it and it will be naturally centered within the workspace of the X tool F1 you want to click on that template and on the right hand side you'll want to make sure that you hit ignore because you do not want to process the template as part of your engraving process creative space will now ignore this file and it will just serve as a backdrop for us to align our graphics with respect to this fixture because it's a multi-purpose fixture and shortly I'll explain what all of those other dotted lines are for but if you're just using it for a v Block it's really simple I've imported a nether graphic and this is what we're going to be engraving onto that business card I'm going to resize it so it should fit on a flat business card I'll make sure the graphic is centered in the workspace because our mug will naturally be centered on that V block and I'm just going to change some of the settings here to some settings that work well on these metal business cards then it's just a matter of clicking the framing button and I'm going to have to move my work piece down ever so slightly so that the graphic will fall directly onto this business card and we'll process this when processing most mugs and tumblers with this V block fixture you're going to have to leave the lid open so definitely put your laser safety glasses on when the job is complete we can inspect the final result and what we'll find is that most of this Audi logo actually came in quite nice even the fine detail in the text at the bottom is perfectly clear and sharp it really isn't until you get to the outer edges where things start to fade what this tells me is that the laser focus is not really all that sensitive and if I put a caliper over the graphic I would say that a 40 mm width graphic will come out really nice on a 100 mm diameter tumbler without the rotary tool I flipped the metal business card over and I've brought in another graphic I've resized it to be 40 mm wide and in this case we shouldn't see any loss of detail on the outside edges of the graphic even if you're using the rotary module taping a metal business card to the surface is a great way of testing how a graphic is going to look on your mug or Tumblr without sacrificing one of these expensive work pieces the metal business CS themselves are fairly cheap and they're great for these sorts of TX s if you guys appreciate this moneysaving trick consider pressing the like button down below so let's have a look at this logo and you can see here that it looks completely fine you'd never know that it was done without a rotary module and this is a great solution for those of you who are perhaps still saving up for the R2 or just want to experiment with some mugs and tumblers without making that investment up front I always try to bring you guys the most possible value with my products and so this is a multi-purpose fixture and you can see here that it will fit nine pencils engraving pencils seems to be a pretty popular Trend these days and I've got these nice bare wood pencils I've lined them all up on the fixture and then in X tool creative space I've brought in some text I lined up these nine inspirational quotes in a single file using Adobe Illustrator you can also do this in a free program called inkscape or alternatively right in X tool creative space you can use the text tool and you can just go ahead and type whatever you want in the background template you you can see it's these red dashed lines that Define the area for Engraving the pencils I'll be using the 3mm Basswood presets for these pencils and I'm just going to move my graphic to a different layer and hide it to make sure that when I select it it's the only thing being output and again you do not want the template in the background being output you want it set to ignore I also want to get a nice dark engraving of this text so I'm going to up the dot duration to 680 micros and I'll leave all of the other settings as is then we can process this job and if you guys are looking for some recommendations for these barewood pencils I'll put some links in the video description down below most of these pencils are too long to fit with the lid completely shut so be sure to wear your laser safety glasses I really like the final result with these inspirational quotes but of course you can do other things like personalize the pencils with people's names it's a really quick and easy item to to sell on Etsy or you could even just give them away as novelty gifts the third and final item these fixtures can hold are these aluminum bottle and can openers I did my best to size the fixture for the widest ones possible because even within the same pack they come in a variety of widths the profile appears to be an aluminum Extrusion and the factory is just cutting them to more or less 12 mm wide and then anodizing them different colors you can fit five of them in the fixture at a time and just make sure the key rings are not causing them to lift they should be sitting flat in the fixture and we can clean off the surface with a little bit of isopropyl alcohol in X tool creative space I've brought in my logo and I've centered it within the green dashed lines those green Dash lines on the template represent the workable area for the top of these bottle openers the bottle openers are anodized aluminum so I'll be using the IR laser with a 150 microc dot duration power at 65% DPI at 700 and the bitmap mold in Jarvis when working towards the outer edges of the workspace with the IR laser I would highly recommend in the settings activating the infrared Ray preheat this helps prevent faded Graphics when working towards the outer edges of the workspace with the infrared laser now we're ready to process this job and with these keychain bottle openers they're small enough that you should be able to close the front cover and the only reason that have it open here is to get a better video shot for you guys some colors look a little better than others I happen to buy a multicolored pack of these bottle openers to show you guys the various colors and how they turn out but you can easily Source them in single colors online and I'll put a link again in the video description down below where you can find these things in various quantities so there it is the F1 with the ra2 I hope you guys enjoyed all of those examples and perhaps learned something along the way if you guys really appreciate these very thorough tutorial videos be sure to hit that subscribe button I've got more xtool content coming including the big P2 don't forget to check out my website embrace.com where you'll find all of the upgrades that I showed you guys in this video and check the video description down below for all of the relevant links thanks for watching and see you guys next [Music] time [Music]

Channel: Embrace Making

Views: 3,136

Keywords: xtool f1 review, xtool f1 laser, xtool f1 rotary, xtool f1 metal, xtool f1 acrylic, xtool f1 tumbler, xtool f1 setup, xtool f1 guide, xtool f1 tutorial, xtool f1 stainless steel, xtool f1 projects, xtool f1 fumes, xtool f1 smoke, xtool f1 engraving, xtool f1 cutting, xtool f1 fixtures, xtool f1 jig, xtool f1 settings, xtool f1 materials, xtool f1 vs laser pecker, xtool f1 getting started, xtool f1 mug, xtool f1 stanley, xtool f1 wine tumbler, xtool f1 glass

Id: c5MLZyLqKB0

Length: 40min 43sec (2443 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 04 2024