xTool F1 ULTRA First Review + MY TOP TIPS!

this is the brand new xtool F1 Ultra as always let's start with some project action first and after that we'll do all the yapping the first example project we're doing today illustrates the beauty of having a versatile galvo style laser like the F1 Ultra in your Workshop I picked up this salt seller at Target the other day because I really like the way it looks and we can engrave it in multiple different places let's start with the top of the lid I line the outside edge of the lid to the framing beam projecting the boundaries of my design that's that blue circle you see swirling around next I double check my position by Framing an outline of the spoon holder section because I need this to be spot on for the graphic I'm engraving time to let rip to engrave the lid like that it took approximately 2 minutes and 47 seconds that's it looking good let's engrave some text in the bottom of the spoon section now let's do an engraving in a spot that's literally impossible to do with a standard Gantry laser like the S1 or P2 the bottom of the cup moving along for this next position we're going to use the ra2 Pro Plus rotary attachment I'm engraving my daughter's name along the side and want to make sure it's centered I went a little old school with a pen and paper to triple check I'm not a seasoned rotary Pro like some of you out there beautiful result results the lines are crisp and the engraving on this Olive Wood really Pops that spoon's looking a little bare wouldn't you say let's add a little Finishing Touch to the handle it took just six minutes total run time to engrave all five spots and I'm sure I could optimize those settings down even further next example let's try these popular coded metal wallets I love these things because they're cheap to buy in bulk and make impressive little gifts and even better the F1 Ultra knocks them out fast the first design is an edgo edge Vector graphic I did with the IR Laser It produced a brilliant white engraving which took 2 minutes and 43 seconds to finish can't forget the metal money clip on the back let's engrave that too I did five quick passes on the IR laser to leave a nice name Engraving [Music] since I finished that one way faster than I expected I tried this bit map image of a zebra let's check out the results the wallet on the left looks just how I expected the zebra I need to play with the settings more I ran the file without testing but it's good to know even making up numbers can produce a nice image next example let's do a cod in stainless steel tumbler I'm still pretty new to the rotary attachment so I decided to shoot for the fences and do a seamless full wrap design end to end now the moment of truth will my design actually connect to the opposite end [Music] [Music] looks pretty good to me I'll take it it's actually hard to see where the seamless design starts and finishes next example let's try out a brass coin I kind of feel like a pirate with all these right now It produced a nice dark black mark that you can definitely feel with just one pass I know a lot of people had issues getting dark marks with the regular F1 that shouldn't be a problem at all with this machine next example let's try a powdercoated aluminum hotel Key this is the custom blank I have made specifically for me by the company sen cut send highly recommend if you want to test the waters of having your own metal blanks made for I opted for two passes here the first pass is with the blue light laser and the second pass is with the IR it resulted in this beautiful contrasting white on black for our last example of the day let's ingrade multiple edges on this wooden tray I actually have a couple giant boxes full of these wooden trays because they're one part of my secret Etsy Shop project I'm working on I'll talk a little bit more about this later on I truly love the framing functionality on a galvo laser could you imagine how annoying it would be trying to frame a design along the edge like this using a regular Gantry machine not a chance in the world on doing that for I got a nice deep engraving on the wood in just 21 seconds per side 21 seconds all right with projects out of the way let's go all the way back to the beginning as far as unboxing and setup goes I don't have a whole lot to report the box is a little heavy as to be expected but definitely manageable to move around this one person everything is packed neatly and securely as I've come to expect with all xtool products I thought the Box seemed a little empty at first until I realized there were more parts packed inside of the laser the print instructions are good but honestly there's only like four steps to get up and running attach the exhaust insert the key attach the touch screen plug it in and turn it on oh yeah and don't forget to remove the lens cap let me preface all of this by saying I've only had this laser for the past 3 weeks but in that time I've clocked a fair amount of runtime on it and I'm getting a good feel for how it operates I haven't explored all the capabilities yet because there are just too many options but I will surely be doing some follow-up videos for example the conveyor belt attachments are starting to ship out now and I haven't ventured into deep Engravings yet so there will be more to come anyways this is the F1 Ultra the big brother to the original F1 I kind of wish I had the original F1 here to do a side-by-side comparison but I opted to skip that one and I'll tell you why in a little bit the F1 Ultra is the world's first dual 20 wat diode sl20 wat fiber laser I don't want to sit here and Bore You by just reading specs from the website you can do that on your own time but I do want to clarify some of the terminology I used in the projects you just watch watched to avoid confusion in Creative space 2.0 as of right now when using the F1 Ultra the options to select your laser type read as blue light and IR blue light is for the diode laser and IR is for the fiber that's why I said IR in my voiceovers I'm always going to match what's displayed for clarity now let's talk about the things I like about the F1 Ultra number one the small footprint over the years I really started to become more and more interested in galvo style lasers over Gantry lasers because they just take up so much less space the ultra is about 9 in wide by 13 in long and 19 in tall and basically fits anywhere you want to put it contrast that with something like my P2 or even worse my boss CO2 which should be paying me rent for how much space it needs not only does the ultra have a small footprint it's easy to pick up and move around that's important to me because I don't have a lot of room here and often need to rearrange things however it is substantially larger than the original F1 and doesn't come with that neat little handle on the top that's the price we pay for more power number two the upgrade to 20 watts of power I mentioned earlier when I was offered to review the original F1 many months ago I decided to pass that's because all the lasers I review I try to incorporate into my business setup here I use my 40 wat S1 for prototyping and Engraving screens I use my P2 for cutting parts from 3mm Plywood And I use my boss for all the acrylic orders I couldn't think of a good use for the F1 with just 10 watts of diode power and 2 Watts IR power but when xtool reached out saying they upgraded the F1 to 20 wat 20 watt well that piqu my interest I have a business use for that which I previewed with those wood trays the 20 wat diode is powerful enough to quickly do deep Engravings but also keeps beautiful detail the 20 fiber is a massive improvement over the two watt offered in the original F1 the two watt would barely scratch the surface of metals but the 20 wat has enough power to make an impact number three the versatility of having the two different laser sources that I can quickly swap between I can do one layer with the blue light laser and go over it again with the fiber like I did on that hotel Key having both laser sources like that opens you up to engraving on a massive range of materials number four just the all-encompassing speed not just the speed of the laser while it's processing which is fast but also how quickly I get job set up I don't know about you guys but my least favorite part about working with lasers is all the setup work especially on Gantry lasers combining the F1 Ultra with the new tabbed project capabilities in Creative space 2.0 I was moving between projects super fast for example on the salt Celler project I had five open tabs for each of those Engravings we did and had all the settings dialed in and ready to roll as soon as one was done I just moved to the next tab set it to laser and knocked it out the speed of setup especially applies to the framing functionality Galo lasers project the boundaries of your design to the material so you know exactly where the engraving is going to be placed this is crucial when you're trying to engrave something small and precious like a piece of jewelry trying to do that on a Gantry laser is much more timec consuming now let's talk about some of my dislikes this was actually a pretty tough list to compile since there's nothing that's really stood out yet that I don't like about the laser itself but there are a couple things regarding the control of the laser I would like to see upgraded in the future number one I think we should be able to manually input the focus distance in Creative space there were times when I was defocusing to create a desired effect like with the Tumblr project and I had to manually jog the laser with the touchpad not the end of the world but if I know I want to defocus by 4 mm I should be able to enter that number directly number two again this is software related but I wish we had a little more granular control over the layers and some of the scanning options now that we have 20 watts of power it would be great if it were easier to organize loops and passes if you aren't familiar with laser engraving metal a big part of it looping the file and Engraving it many times in a row instead of just one time like you might do with a piece of wood sometimes it's 10 times s in a row and sometimes it's over 200 it all depends on what you're trying to achieve and on top of that sometimes you want to mix in a pass with different speed and power settings for a desired effect there were a couple times I wanted to do a setup like this but had to manually copy and paste the layers over top of each other to simulate that this would be easily solved with a su layer style system like light bur has it just keeps everything nice and orderly also if we could change the scan angle that would be cool as saw it in the emboss section when I was poking around so hopefully that gets added for regular Vector engraving and number three I guess it's not fair if I don't mention something about the laser specifically so I'll go with the camera the camera is a cool addition don't get me wrong but once I got into the swing of things I found myself forgetting to even capture an image and that's because the framing functionality is so good I didn't need the camera at all to figure out where to place my design now let me give my two cents on who I think should consider buying this laser actually let's start with who I think shouldn't buy this laser if you're someone right now shopping for a laser specifically to do metal and nothing else this one's probably not for you it's not a knock on the ultra but if you only need something to do metal alone you should take your $3 to $4,000 budget and get at least a 50 or 60 wat Standalone fiber laser in my opinion the beauty of the F1 Ultra is the versatility not that it's specialized to one kind of material also if you plan on doing mostly cutting related projects or you want to make like large signs this is not the laser for you while the working area is generous for a Galo laser it's not intended to cut large pieces of wood galvo lasers were designed for fast engraving and marking you absolutely can cut with it but where it really shines is with engraving now who should consider buying this laser if you envision yourself as someone that's going to be doing mostly engraving and marking on materials and products that are already pre-cut or pre-made the F1 Ultra is right up your alley what do I mean by that let's say you want to start an engraving side hustle doing customized jewelry nine times out of 10 the necklaces charms Rings pendants you're going to be selling are already pre-made you buy them in bulk and use the laser to customize them or maybe you want to offer wedding favors and you need to customize 50 pieces of silverware and five sets of flasks and wallets for groomsman Gibs this is a perfect laser for that type of work you can knock out a set of five customized leather wallets in like five minutes going back to my wooden trays I have over a hundred of these things sitting right next to me they're one part of my new Etsy product I'm launching that will require a custom engraving before getting mailed out my plan is to create a large stock of finished products and when I get an order all I need to do is pull one off the shelf pop it into my F1 Ultra engrave whatever name the customer wants and ship it out this process will go way faster using the F1 Ultra over any other laser I have in my shop right now while you can definitely enjoy this laser as a hobbyist I think it's much better suited for someone that's interested in making money with their laser work again if you're buying blank cutting boards coasters keychains wallets and you want to make some stock For an upcoming craft fair for example the F1 Ultra will get that done way faster than the S1 P2 or the original F1 now for my F1 Ultra top tips number one order s a pair of these safety glasses there's a link in the video description below to the ones I have here these cover both wave lengths of the F1 Ultra so you don't need to swap between two pairs of glasses you're safe when the screen is fully shut like this but there will be plenty of times like when using the rotary attachment where the screen will be up and you'll be potentially exposed to damaging Light number two this one is in the duh category but if you don't see the red and blue lights on the platform after turning your laser on you probably forgot to take off your lens cap double check before freaking out I may or may not have firsthand experience with this one number three autofocus trust but verify for the majority of my projects the autofocus worked perfectly but there were one or two occasions where I think it got a little confused if that's the case just run it again and it should correct if it's really off go to the settings panel and hit Z homing which will reset it to zero and start the process over over again staying on the topic of focus I found the focal distance for the fiber laser to be pretty narrow so if you aren't getting the results you want try down focusing a millimeter or two you want to see a nice bright light where the laser hits the metal it also has a really specific crackling sound that's unmistakable if the light is dim and you can't hear that sound well try adjusting the focus manually number four the new camera feature is an awesome addition and I find it's best used for roughly positioning your engraving and then using the framing function to make it perfect once your material is in Focus you can shift it around as needed it's not glued to that spot all cameras will have a slightly sked perspective it's just the nature of cameras overall so far so good as far as I'm concerned I haven't run into anything I would consider a deal breaker yet it's really easy to set up and get running and the results I'm getting are up to my expectations for this kind a laser I'm excited to keep testing its capabilities and sharing what I learned with you all and now for the disclosure portion of this video in full transparency I'm an exto partner and they sent me this laser in return for an honest review I'm sure that's pretty obvious by this point but if I do come across aspects of the laser I don't like I will disclose them honestly that's why I like working with xtool they're very receptive to feedback and always want to improve and push the envelope I appreciate that if this review helps you on on deciding to purchase the F1 Ultra or anything from xtool for that matter I would greatly appreciate if you could use the link in the video description below it doesn't cost you anything but xtool will kick back a couple bucks to me which helps me pay for everything I've got going on here and make more videos I know these videos only like 10 to 20 minutes long but they equate to weeks of work as always thanks for watching and if you have any specific questions on the F1 Ultra you can add them in the comment section below if I can't answer it I'll try my best to get you a suitable answer I look forward to seeing what everyone's going to be making with their F1 Ultra I watch all the videos here on YouTube I'll catch you next time

Channel: Justin Laser

Views: 20,319

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Id: ZYBpaBVfl9o

Length: 23min 9sec (1389 seconds)

Published: Thu May 30 2024