xTool S1 40W Engraver Machine with Riser Base & Honeycomb Working Sheet & Air Assit & RA2 Pro, Enclosed Cutter and Engraving Machine for Wood, Metal, Leather, Acrylic and Glass, Class I Safety

I bought the S1 as an addition to my woodworking shop. I chose the 40w version as most of my work will involve cutting but it’s quite capable of engraving too. The S1 makes easy and quick work of most tasks, cutting cleanly up to 18mm thick material without problem. Being fully enclosed also means it’s much safer to use than many open frame lasers. The built in extractor provides adequate smoke extraction. The air assist is essential in my view as this helps produce clean cuts. An added bonus is the flame detection system. Personally, I connect to the machine via USB. I’d like to see the addition of a RJ45 socket so it can be networked via cable although the machine does come with WiFi. Thoroughly recommended. I've included a couple of photos of the sorts of things I've produced.

This is a really good machine, well built and well packaged. I already have the 20w version and have had no issues at all with it. It works well with either Xtools own XCS software or Lightburn and gives really good results. I would recommend joining the S1 and xtool Facebook community pages as they are a gold mine of info and tips plus you get some great ideas and examples of what you can achieve. The customer support is also excellent - Amazon actually delivered a 10w machine instead of the 40w I ordered and they offered to replace the machine themselves and also offered a compensation package to make up for the delay and inconvenience despite it not being their fault. They also contacted Amazon themselves for an explanation of how the delivery went wrong. If you need them use the Facebook support page, I have never had any issues they couldn’t solve. Definitely happy with my purchase despite Amazon messing up the delivery, it’s not exactly cheap but no laser of this power is and worth the money if you take time to learn how to use the software to get the best from it.

Bigger than expected but great machine

How many stars should I give? It's a good looking and reasonably specified machine. It looks well made and comes very well packed. But I have to give it three. The reason is despite the ads and the glowing reviews it wasn't easy to get started and wasted a lot of time. Firstly - and I only realised this at the end the package sent to me was manufactured nearly two years ago. Probably that would explain the somewhat tatty condition of the box, and earlier order was resturned unopened as it looked like the box had been kicked around. However, had a I realised this when it arrived, it would have given clues as to why I couldn't get it to work. In short the machine wouldn't talk to my computer. For the first week I assumed I was being stupid or had duff cables or something. I ried different computers, different cables and adaptors, Windows and a Mac. None of the combinations got the xTool software to recognise the machine, the most I got was an error message. In frustration, I contacted xtool support. I have to say they are really good. They took me down a diagnostic path over a series of emails. This led to my 'new' machine being too old for the current xtool software, but also for Lightburn. What worked was going back into their archives, downloading and installing an old version of xtool software and then using that to download and update the formware in the machine. Then the current software could be downloaded and installed again. After all this, which took another week, I managed to get a test cut done. Xtool's own software is fairly basic, and I want to use my files, originated in Adobe Illustrator with it. I saved these is a couple of xtool friendly formats and gave it a go. Another hiccup. A cut that I would have expected to be easy took forever, in fact I gave up after 45 mins when it had done about a third. Lightburn did a better job, but I was getting nervous, especially when I went back to support and they suggested a new control board may have to be installed. There was just two days left on the return window, fearing more chaos I sent the S1 back. Disappointed.

Great performance and wow it’s great, easy to use. Only disappointing thing is when you look into larger projects with the feeder. It requires a different base with doors for project to pass through. Having just paid for the round object engraver. That’s very disappointing.

That it is a great machine and fast delivery