Yep another laser cutter I know but this P2 by xTool is different it comes with a handful
of fancy features including the ability to map a curved surface and engrave in 3D that's something
I haven't seen from any other CO2 laser cutter and it got me pretty intrigued so I had to try it out
I also recently got this Mini Carver from ArborTech which lets me effortlessly carve wood
I realized these two tools in combination could make a pretty powerful duo so that's what I'm
getting into today I'll be showing you the process of setting up this P2 laser cutter and using it to
make a really cool project using that 3D engraving feature I'm pretty excited so let's get right
into it here it is the xTool P2 55 watt laser cutter it's got the same general footprint and
form factor of the other CO2 laser cutters I've tried out so far so I do like the sleek dark theme
it arrived well packed and protected so despite being delivered on its side everything was still
in order the machine is 40 inches wide and weighs a hundred pounds so a helping hand
is a good idea to move it around but besides that unpacking was mostly straightforward and
xTool provides a very clear and simple setup guide to get started
while mostly plug-and-play the P2 does require you to fill up the water tank that cools the laser
and the only hurdle I really hit was trying to remove the back cover that reveals the laser tube
for some reason it really didn't want to slide off
and I was a bit worried about breaking something but eventually I got it loose
so here's the 55 watt laser tube which was perfectly intact and on the right side here
we have the water tank the P2 comes with a funnel as well as this antifreeze but since we
don't get freezing temperatures in my region we can fill the tank entirely with distilled water
which is the one additional thing I had to purchase the guide specifies how much water
to add before turning on the machine which starts that water filling the laser tube
after which we can top off the water tank and close everything up
finally we'll connect the exhaust hose and we're good to go
I haven't got the xTool fume extractor yet so I just stuck the hose into the venting
system from My Gweike Cloud Pro Laser for now it doesn't have any filters but it sucks pretty well
then I connected the P2 to my laptop via USB cable you can also connect
by Wi-Fi and other means but I like having a direct offline connection
the laser also comes with some cardboard acrylic and basswood sheets to get started so we'll
use those for some quick test cuts instead of the traditional honeycomb bed we've got these
removable slats and some springy clips that connect to them for holding down our material
it's a nice little system now let's take a look at the xTool Creative Space software I can refresh
the wide angle camera to get a full view of the build area and there's also an automatic
measuring feature which didn't get me a totally accurate measurement in this case but let's just
roll with it next I'll import my design which I had exported as a dxf file from Adobe Illustrator
and the software recognized the different layers which is cool but the various outlines of my
illustration were all separated so I had to use the built-in combination tools to subtract the
inner outlines from the outer one in order to get the correct image I've since learned that
an SVG file does import properly combined so I'll do that going forward anyways from here I tried to
find the basswood settings for the engraving but it wasn't showing up so I was about to do some
test circles and ended up on this different menu which did have the basswood settings so forget
that I'll just go straight for my own design you should pretty much always run test cuts
when using a new material but I was feeling ballsy so with my drawing setting grave and the outline
set to cut I clicked start which leads to this preview and then I'll click start once more to
actually send the job to the machine now I can bonk the button to start it up and off it goes
the entire piece here took eight minutes and I think it came out very well
there are some slight burn marks around the cut but the built-in air assist works to minimize
that and you can always mask the surface with tape or masking film to reduce that further
next up I threw in some three millimeter acrylic to cut a quick base
the P2 has this nice display to show progress and this cut was done in about 30 seconds
again I just used the default settings and it worked flawlessly
considering that I just jumped into the xTool software without reading any instructions and
managed to pull this off first try was pretty satisfying and I just love the subtle depth
effect that these engravings have I also decided to engrave a quick make anything
logo on the back to test out some smaller details I did forget to switch back to the
basswood settings and I didn't group the shapes so they all engraved one at a time
which was pretty inefficient but the end result came out looking good all the same
super cool being able to pull off this test without any extra calibration is certainly a
victory for the P2 laser cutter but now it's time for a more significant project that will really
put this machine to the test for an actual business application and to use that fancy
3D curve engraving feature my sister's wedding is coming up next month and I was asked to make
some numbers to help guests find their tables that could be something as simple as making
little signs like our scooter fly here but for my dear sister I had to do something a little extra
my plan for this project is to get some wooden logs and hollow them out so they
have a smooth inner surface while retaining the live bark on the outside then I'll use
the P2's 3D curve feature to scan the concave surface and engrave the numbers there upon
here are the logs I plan to use I chose to go with the pine ones on the left over
the oak since it's much less dense and should be easier to work with
so I began measuring and marking off sections of that pine aiming for pieces that are roughly five
to six inches tall and trying to capture the more interesting pieces of bark on the outside as well
now we'll head over to the bandsaw where I can make the rough cuts to get our individual pieces
of course I am trying to make nice straight cuts but I'll also be sanding these sides flat later on
so it doesn't have to be perfect I can also start to trim off any branches sticking out
and then I'll start carving away the center of the logs
these cuts are definitely precarious being quite tall and having the wood
grain running vertically in a way that they could unintentionally split so I was
very slow and careful here assuming that the wood might break off at any moment
thankfully nothing went haywire and I still have all my fingers
here are all the pieces I made and a couple actually did split after
cutting so I'll just go ahead and use wood glue to stick those back together
along with silicone bands and some weight to apply pressure while they dry
speaking of drying while these logs did dry outdoors for several months I wanted to make
sure to kill any mold and bugs that might still be growing on them so I used my filament dryer
to further cure the wood I left them in there for several hours at 70 degrees Celsius which
should do the trick after that I did a bit of cleanup on the bark breaking off any loose bits
and brushing away as much dirt and dust as I could I am going for a natural look here but
I still want things to be relatively clean okay time for some carving fun with the arbor tech
Mini Carver and this Mini Pro carving blade I clamped the pieces down with some packing
foam for protection hooked the Carver up to my shop vac and carefully started shaping the wood
my goal was to make these pieces about half an inch thick so I just carved away while
pinching the wood now and then to gauge the thickness I'm really glad I went with this
softer pine because it carved away super easily and I didn't run into any issues
each piece took about five minutes and I was having fun the whole time
next it's time to sand and the Mini Carver can do that as well it comes with three grits of
sandpaper and I started with the middle 180 grit discs since my pieces are already fairly smooth
this was my first time using the sanding attachment for the Mini Carver and I
guess I was a bit careless because I quickly thrashed the sanding disc
so going forward I was more deliberate with my strokes and I didn't run into
any more problems with that for the rest of the pieces
as with my last woodworking project I did have a few pieces with beetle
holes so this time I soaked those with super glue before sanding them down a bit further
this thin Starbond glue absorbs into the wood really well now it's time to sand the
ends of the wood which I'll do using this belt sander with an 80 grit belt
I just manually oriented the parts until the top and bottom edges were completely
flat making sure that the pieces could stand upright on their own
while I was at it I also flattened the ends of any branches on the back
with that my pieces are nice and smooth with just a tiny bit of
hand sanding at the end to clean up my edges before it's off to the laser cutter
here we are at the xTool P2 where I can remove these slats to make room for my curved pieces but
first I am going to start with a small sample piece since I don't have too many spare parts
I'll be using adhesive putty to hold my pieces in place and I intentionally angled this piece to try
out the curved measuring feature I also printed this quick adapter for my air extraction fan to
hopefully make it a bit more efficient now let's head back into the xTool Creative Space software
where I'll switch to the curve process mode and then click curve measure which brings up
this box to prepare our 3D scan these arrows let you move the laser head along with this
red laser dot which will move to the top left corner of our material and Mark it as vertex 1.
then we'll move down to the opposite corner and mark that vertex two
once those points are marked we'll click next and then start measuring with that the laser moves in
a grid across the material measuring all these individual points which it then uses to create
a mesh surface that represents our piece I have found that you do want a slight margin around the
edge of the material for a successful scan and eight millimeters generally seems to work well
we'll click done to return to the main screen which highlights the area that we just scanned
now I can bring in an SVG file and scale it to fit on our test piece
we'll set the mode to engrave and to start out I just guessed some power settings
we can also click on this little icon to bring up our mesh and then we can click this map button
to see our preview on the 3D surface so the P2's built-in cameras don't work for this 3D engraving
mode but since we've mapped out the entire part we can still see that the engraving here will be
more or less centered everything looks good so we'll send our job to the machine and it turns
out 40% power is pretty strong for this material engraving nearly 10 millimeters deep in one pass
and producing a lot of flame so I quickly put an end to that and adjusted the power down to
six percent along with lowering the resolution and that produced a much more reasonable result
as you can see in this 3D engraving mode the top speed is much slower than the standard engraving
which I'm guessing is a software limitation based on the Z movement that would have to happen for
more dramatic curves this process is in beta so maybe we will get a bit of a speed boost with
future software updates but the most important thing is that the end result looks really good
the engraving came out very dark and clean and I was happy with the settings so it's time to
go straight for the full size numbers I'll continue using that putty to hold the wood
in place and I also temporarily used the slats to align the piece with the XY grid of the machine
once again I ran through the curve measurement process for this piece and the preview came
out looking really accurate so I lined up my number and used the same settings from my last
test except I lowered the resolution to 100 lines per centimeter which will speed up the job a bit
and shouldn't affect the outcome much since this is a fairly large and simple engraving
one final preview to make sure everything looks good and off we go
our first number came out great it's a very clean
engraving the positioning was perfect so it's straight on to the next one
after the next each piece came out looking wonderful
even without the camera preview I was still able to position the graphics and I perfectly
concealed the crack in this wood knot which was awesome we can see a bit of
resin escaped from the wood around that knot but that's hardly visible to the naked eye
also on some of my most curved pieces the software did give me a warning but I just
ignored that and it still worked out just barely but it worked nonetheless
I also ended up wanting to trim some of the edges to make the pieces a bit more narrow so for those
I just took a knife and a hammer and kind of broke off the ends by going along the grain of the wood
while that probably could have gone poorly I was happy with the results in fact I managed to make
all 12 numbers without any failures so I was even able to make an extra sign for the bride and groom
again I was maxing out the steepness here but once again it just barely worked
this piece took the longest to engrave at just over an hour
my final step was to dust off any ashes hanging onto the pieces using the air compressor
for a more permanent piece I would have used some kind of clear coat for preservation but
since these are only meant for one special day I left the wood Roth that's actually nice because
these pieces will be usable for compost or firewood after they've served their purpose
all right here is my grand collection of numbers and I could not be more happy with the results
this has been one of the most painless projects
I've done in a long time with nearly everything going according to plan
as I hoped the Mini Carver and P2 laser cutter combo was exactly what I needed to pull these off
and I think they look great still I've just barely scratched the surface of what that xTool P2 laser
cutter can do so if you liked this video and want to see future projects make sure you're subscribed
and check out the links in the description to learn more about the tools I used today
that's it for today's video so I'll see you in the next one and as always take care and stay inspired