xTool MetalFab Metalworking Made Simple

[Music] And then a quick little whip at the end. Perfect. [Music] What is up? Welcome back. Today we're at the X Tool Metal Fab launch and we're here with Mike Smurka from Dio Designs. He's going to help us out and give us a tour. Absolutely. I'm glad to be here. So, what do we know about Extol? We have a bunch of Extol machines. We've used their products for a couple of years now. We have the apparel printer and I'm constantly impressed with the products that they have. So, I'm really interested to learn about more about the metal fab machine. I had done nothing with metal fabrication, so I'm guessing it's going to work a lot like a laser. Very similar to a laser. And the other cool thing about this machine that puts this in a whole other ballpark is that it uses XCS. So if you're familiar with lasering and you're familiar with the P2, the F1 Ultra, the M1, any of their software, you're in you don't have a learning curve of relearning a software. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, that's perfect. I heard this thing can both cut, weld, and clean. And I heard it can even do it underwater. So that is all technically true. The underwater part, it can do it underwater, but it's not an underwater welder. Truly, the tip can go in the water. You can't submerge the entire gun. The other part though, entirely true, it can cut up to 10 mm carbon steel. I've cut 5 mm Damascus for making knives. It can also cut so thin as to do like half a millimeter brass. It could do laser welding if you take the welder and you can hand weld all of that together to make different crafts, different chairs. And then if you're like me and you forgot your cast iron outside and it gets a little rusty, you can even break it out to do a little rust removal on that. All right, let me step aside so we can look at the machine. So Mike has done a lot of demo rooms on this machine. He is probably the closest thing to an expert that we can get a hold of. That's true. Uh I w I am the pro hub. I was the first pro hub in the US. So, I got the machine a little bit ago, so I have a little bit more practice with it. I'm going to walk you through some quick features of the machine that really make it special. So, it has not only one camera that does the whole bed, but it has a second camera that is actually on the laser head, uh, the gantry itself here that'll capture your close view. So, if you're similar, if it's similar to the P2, you have your capture close view for super accurate things. And then you have your camera up here that captures the whole bed. That'll get you pretty close to lined up. It also has your slats here. These are going to hold your material up to give it some support, but it also has these clamps here. This walls all the way back, which is really nice that it was on rollers. So, this will clamp your material down to hold it down as you're cutting. And it also has a pass through on both sides, so you could do really long sheets. This clamp is fixed. This is what's going to hold it in place. This one goes back and forth. These slats are removable. So depending on what material you're doing and the length of it, what projects you can go ahead and add them and remove them, move them around. It also has a capacitive nozzle. So that's going to help you maintain the material distance when you're doing these cuts. If it says say has diamond plate, it'll actually follow the path of the the diamond plate. And then when you get to the diamond, it'll pop up, jump over it, and then continue on. It maintains that material distance, which to see it in person is amazing. I like doing curved surfaces. And the So curved surfaces. Yep. So, it'll actually follow paths. Uh, one example that I had is when I was cutting that very thin brass, I didn't have the one end of it really supported as well, and as it was going along, the air was pushing it down because you have to use air pressure to keep the everything clean like an air assist. Yeah, it's just blowing through and it pushed that half mm brass down and it still maintained and it followed it. So, it it made up for my error. The other thing is how easy and quick it is to swap between the CNC and the welding. It is simply one clasp and one, two, three clamps. Change out the nozzle and you're ready to weld. The other, it has this drawer down here. That's where it'll catch all your scrap materials and it also will catch your actual like your pieces if they do fall through cuz you don't want them to get caught in the way. Another thing that's really cool about the CNC portion of it, it does have a collision detection where if if you worked with metal or cutting or even say acrylic, say you were using the P2 and you have that little piece that oh sticks up. Well, you don't want it to hit cuz if you've ever worked with lasers and things like that, it hits and it shifts your whole thing, ruins the whole thing. Last week, just last week, this will actually detect that. It'll actually stop, raise itself up, give you a collision warning. Go ahead. Okay. on your XCS screen or you remove the piece and you just hit the button and resume. So, it saves you from rooting all that material, restarting your project. It has a network, an RJ45 typical Ethernet port in the front. You can also use it with your USBC and it also works on Wi-Fi, so no more dragging cables. Now that we know all the features, let's go ahead and cut our own project. So, we provided Mike an SVG file for an address sign. We're going to go ahead and load that into Creative Space. Yep. We'll load it the exact same way you would any other SVG if you're familiar with XCS. It's a simple file import. Once we get it there, all we're going to do for this 1 millimeter stainless steel that we're going to load, we're going to go ahead and use our preset materials library. Go ahead, select the 1 millm stainless. It applies all the power speed settings, so it takes all that guess work out for you. And then all you do is you hit [Music] start. [Music] Our sign came out great. This is beautiful. I can't wait to mount this at the shop. This is our shop address. It looks awesome. I'm so impressed. And it was so fast. so fast. I didn't even want to look away. I just stood there and watched it. I was It was moving way faster than the lasers move. Like way faster. It was pretty crazy how fast it cuts through that metal. All right. Well, now we get to try the welding aspect. We'll just see how we convert from the cutter to the welder. So, to switch from the cutter to the welder, all you're going to do power your machine off. I have. And as I mentioned, it's simply one clasp. One, two, three clamps. Get your cable out. So, it's the same thing. It's just that's the welder and the cutters. Swap the tip from the telescopic lens of the welder. Cutter. Oh, yeah. from the cutter. You just switch it over to your welding tip with your welding filler wire. Slide that in. There's a little notch. Clamp it down. Clip that wire in there. And now, just that simple. We're ready to weld. Now, we're going to try some welding. We're going to see if I can weld any better than Kim. I've never welded before. Mike's going to give me some pointers. and we're going to see how it goes. So, the key is when you have it, you want to have the the wire just sticking slightly out. You want to make sure it's in between the notch on the uh the top of the nozzle here. The wire feeds here. So, you can actually use these two buttons on the top here to feed the wire backwards or roll it back depending on the length. When you're welding, we'll do a quick little T- joint. This way, they can do either side a T- weld. So, you're going to weld directly down here. You're going to keep the gun right about this angle. Okay? Keep it right in that gap and just let the uh laser do the work. So, you shouldn't force it and you shouldn't for uh you shouldn't fight it. Just let it ride. Let it kind of ride. It'll push you along. All right. You ready? Yep. Damn it. I'm in the flowers bar there. That's a great weld. I think that's a pretty good weld. I'm I'm excited to see who wins this. Yeah. All right, Kim's up. Let's switch. All right. One thing I also did want to mention though, you want to make sure that you have you're either doing it on a welding table or you have your ground connected to the metal object that you're welding. That's going to create a closed loop which is going to allow the electricity to flow and allow you to weld. Another thing that I wanted to point out, it has a two-stage trigger. One, two. So, you have to hold both of those in order to weld. That's a safety feature so we don't accidentally uh weld something we shouldn't like ourselves. Now, I don't I can do this with short sleeves on. I don't have to have like full length gloves. It's always best to wear as much PP as possible. Sparks do fly. That being said, I haven't uh burned myself up yet, so use at your own risk. I don't have I would suggest wearing uh a non-synthetic clothing. All right, we're going we're going to go for it. I'm only doing a little weld. Yeah, just a little. You got this. Like this? Yep. And then a quick little whip at the end. Perfect. Did I get it? I mean, that's also a great looking weld. I don't know who did better. I gave you a five. I would say for that extra $5, Eric definitely won the challenge. However, I would say that this is a weld that you could even stomp on and it would still hold. Yeah. Didn't stand on. Yeah. Here's our Here's our fun game. Can I Oh, it's warm. A little bit hot. A little bit warm at the bottom. Yeah, that's where I touched it. All right. So, I'm going to come over there. Y. So, before you do that, zoom in on that weld. You guys Bears did great. That's Kim's weld. Kim's weld. Garrett's weld. Oh, I do think he beat me. Yeah, I got real shaky. As you can see on the bottom though, you did get full penetration through. So that's a very, very solid weld. And it's also not heat distorted. It is warm because you welded it, but it's not distorted. All right. All right. All right. Give it a stomp. Are you going to do it? You heavy. Well, let's call in the big R. Get it, Mike. Let me see. So you can see you uh we bent the metal. Your weld held. Yeah, the weld held. The metal's bent. Awesome. Look at that. That was so easy. Let me get out of the way. That was so easy to do and I wasn't scared of it. The machine just pulled along. All I had to do is kind of hold on and ride. When you're doing any kind of welding, just like with the laser, you should always have some kind of eye protection. And if you notice, we had these green goggle things on. You know, they look sweet and they come with the laser. They look good. They protect your eyes from the the rays that not only the ones you can see, but the ones you can't see. Similar to when the CNC the cover on the front of it, it has the same material that blocks the laser uh UV rays. Yeah, it's the UV that gets you. All right. I mean, I have to say that was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. I was pretty intimidated by the whole cutting metal and welding metal. So, I've never done it. And this was super easy. I mean, it was like using a giant P2, right? So, it was very similar to using a laser. It was easy to do. It still uses the same software. And I didn't realize that the same that the welder and the laser, it's using the same gun. You just detach it, swap the head, and it turns into a welder. So, it's a cutter and a welder all in one. And I have to say, I'm pretty stoked on being able to weld. I didn't think I'd be able I was thinking about taking classes at my local community college. I was, but now I don't think I need it. I feel like with this thing, I'm pretty much a professional. So, you already considered a pro. Yeah, pretty pretty. A big thanks to Mike from Dio Designs. You go, you should go check out his channel. He's got a bunch of great stuff and he goes more in depth on this thing. He's got a bunch of videos out there. Well, tell us for Xtool. Now, what are you a pro prohub? So, if you needed any uh one-on-one lessons, uh we could teach you there. If you needed any help troubleshooting or if you even wanted a demo of this laser of your own in a one-on-one setting, either virtually or in person, you can book an appointment with us. Awesome. Well, thanks again. Go ahead. What's Thanks again to X Tool. Thanks again to Mike with Dio Designs. And a big thank you to the Make It Mafia. You guys are the best. That is the best family over there. Thank you for all your support. And big thanks to X Tool for having us come out here and uh enjoying their launch with them. I mean, I was pretty stoked on everything that I've seen here. It was super impressive to watch the live go on at the same time our live demo was going on here in San Francisco. They were having a live demo in China and we could watch it while we were going through ours. Yeah, we were doing a live demo here. They were cutting things out. They were doing some welding and then when Stein hooked it connected in, he was live in China for the part of that part of the demo. We were live out of this space here. So, super fun. It was a good time. Good times. Big thank you. And with that, I'm about out of time. I have to go mess with this machine a little bit more and then they're kicking us out. You have to go do something. And maybe you should go check out Mike's channel. Appreciate y'all. See y'all soon. Bye.