Complete video walkthrough of the xTool P3 80W CO2 laser with hands-on testing. Includes ACS automation system analysis, cutting tests, speed benchmarks, and comparison with P2S, OneLaser XRF, and Thunder Bolt.
View Product PageThis is the xTool P3, and of all the lasers I've ever tested in my shop, this is the easiest laser that I've ever used. Now, just because it's easy doesn't mean it can't perform—this thing is massive, it's fast, and it has a lot of power.
Full disclosure: this is not a paid video by xTool. xTool did send me this unit for review, and I am an affiliate for them, but they have no final say in what I'm going to say in this video.
I really do mean this is the easiest laser I've ever used, and it's because of what they're calling their Automated Creation System, or ACS. It's really just the full integration of the machine, the cameras, and the software to make it really easy to use a laser.
If you've never used a laser before, doing something simple actually is kind of hard when you first do it. That's what xTool has absolutely nailed with this machine. To show this, we're going to do something really simple: cut a big circle out of this piece of acrylic, and I'll walk you through the different things that this machine is doing and how it compares to the P2S, which is what this machine is replacing.
So we've got some acrylic, and this machine is on. You can see the lights inside, which is really nice. When I pick up the lid, the very first thing that happens in the overall system is you're going to see this light turn green, which means it just took a picture of whatever is going on inside of the work bed.
When I put the material in the work bed, you're going to see that light turns red, and then it should also turn green. What that means is it just detected material inside of the work bed, and when that happens, we get an image of what's going on with that.
The P2 would also take an image of the work bed, but their camera was set up right here in the back, which worked, but it's a really wide-angle lens. Sometimes it's really hard to get it dialed in to give you something pretty accurate. But putting this on the lid is giving it a better range with less distortion, giving you better accuracy overall.
It also does a cool trick when it's running, which you're going to see here in a second, but the first thing you'll probably notice as you're putting stuff in there is that this work bed is huge compared to what came with the P2.
If I take the crumb tray, which is more or less the entire work area of the P2, this is going to fit very nicely just inside of the P3. You can just see how much bigger right off the bat this machine already is.
Not only is it wider, but it's also deeper. So the old P2 and P2S, they get really thick material in there. You would have to buy a riser, which was an additional purchase, and it just wasn't fully integrated where you could raise and lower the entire work bed itself.
Because the work bed inside of here is using these slats, which is pretty similar to the design we saw with the P2S, as well as with a lot of the higher-end style machines. These are great and adjustable, so you can fully take these out if you're just setting something on the very bottom, or you can move them around as needed.
Now, you might be a fan of using a honeycomb bed, and you totally could with this, because you could just put the honeycomb on top of the slats. You have plenty of room for that to be in there.
Usually the next step with lasers is you're going to want to focus this to your material. A lot of machines will use autofocus, where either they'll move the laser head, or they'll move the work bed up and down to get it in focus.
In the past, xTool has used the laser head itself to go up and down to be able to adjust your focus. But now they're using the work bed itself, so you're able to take full advantage of the thickness that you have in there.
You can manually adjust this with this dial right here. Not only is this just a single button, but there's a screen on top giving you a readout of whatever setting you're messing with. You are able to spin it, and it's going to go up and down, and right now it's just giving me a readout of the distance that this guy is above the surface.
You can manually dial this in if you wanted to, but this is the automated system. Once it took that picture down below, it is also able to auto-detect if you have material inside of there.
I'm pretty sure if you buy material from xTool, it's going to have the QR codes, where it can auto-detect what the material actually is, its thickness, and it's going to automate some settings for you. But even without that, it's going to detect where in this work bed the material is.
So to focus this, literally all you have to do is close the lid, and it's going to put a little green box around where it thinks the material is. It's going to make sure there is material there. Then it's going to raise this up and get an actual focus reading.
[demonstration]
Now, at this point, we are in focus, and if we go to the computer, if I didn't have this set on auto mode, it would just give me the focus point right there of 40.7 millimeters. But just switching back to their auto-process mode, now we have the material placed and the focus is complete.
Oh, and I forgot to mention, in terms of focus, it is using a LiDAR sensor that is right under here, and that's how you can detect the distance to the material.
All we have to do is put our design on the material. So I'm just going to put a big circle right in the middle, and you can see we already have things that are cut out, lining up right there. I've noticed from my testing that the alignment is definitely better than what we saw with the P2S. So you really can trust the positioning more than what you might have in the past.
I'm going to set this to cut, and then usually get to the next point that gets really confusing for people, because you have to figure out: what is my speed and my power?
Something I think is new, at least I didn't see it on the P2S, and something I really wished that xTool had before when they started really integrating these cameras, is the other way to do alignment and positioning: by tracing around your material. And that is what this framing square is going to do.
If I click this, it's going to load it up on the machine. When I start it, it's going to trace a red square around the material, and that's using the exact beam path that your CO2 laser is following.
You have a big 80 watt glass tube on the back, but in line with that, they basically have like a little red laser dot. So that is what is coming out right here through the nozzle. So wherever that red laser dot is, is also going to be wherever your invisible CO2 laser beam is going to come as well.
Now that's a little bit different than if you've used a diode laser before, where you're using a low powered version of that diode to do the actual tracing. But because this is invisible, you can't see it, so they just put that in line with the beam itself.
Everything is basically set up, framing is complete. I'm going to hit start, and you can hear a fan just kicked on. [sound cue: fan engagement]
[demonstration]
We're going to cut out a big circle. Now we're going to run this one more time, but now we're going to cut out a lot more circles. But I want to show you something really cool that this does while it's running: this doesn't just have one camera inside of it, it actually has several.
So as this is going, you can see we're getting a front view of what's inside the machine, and that is that same camera that's in the lid, but now it's just faced forward, so you're able to get a view of that.
But you can also switch it to a side view, so the camera right here in the side is able to give you an overall work view of what's going on inside of your work bed. They actually have two of those cameras in the side, and I believe it's just if you have the work bed really, really far down, they have another angle that is pretty close to give you a good view of what's going on.
There is one more camera, and it is right here on the laser head assembly itself. That one you can use to get a close up view of what's inside of your material, so you can get a really close up picture of what is going on.
This is something the P2 and the P2S also did, but I find this one just does it a little bit faster in terms of taking the picture. There's a light around the camera itself, so you might have seen that flash when it went off. And so now we have a really close up picture of what is going on.
The lighter section is our overall wide angle, and then if I zoom in, you can see it's a little bit different on that circle for the close up version.
Now another thing these two side cameras are helping you with is safety. This has your like normal suite of sensors, with the first one being the lid, so this just can't run when the lid is open. If you open the lid, then it is automatically going to stop the machine.
[pause]
They also have a temperature sensor to tell if something has caught on fire. I believe it is in the laser head itself.
Then they have eight flame sensors. I'm going to get a quick video so you can kind of see, but that is what these clear guys are right here, both on the front, and on the back. So that also is going to detect a fire and cut power to the laser.
But if you have a laser that's already started, and you've got material that's going to burn, just cutting the power to the laser isn't going to put that fire out.
So they've fully integrated basically like tiny fire extinguisher into the back of this machine. This is a tube of CO2 gas that can fire into the work bed. I think it's coming out of this port right here.
Here's an image of what that looks like when you take the panels off the machine. That's a feature I really do want to test out, so people can see how well that works and what it does to the internals of your machine. But even if it does mess up your machine, it's way better than burning down your shop. So that piece of mind is really, really nice.
Now this doesn't have like the built in fan that we saw with the P2 and the P2S, but it now comes with their IF2 Safety Pro. This is an external fan that is pulling fumes away from your machine. You do have to power this separate from the machine itself, but it connects over Bluetooth.
So when you set it in auto mode, you heard that the software was telling it when to kick on and when to kick off. You can even tell it like how much exhaust you want it doing, depending on what's going on with it.
Having an external fan like this is kind of what you see in more pro setups, where we have a big external fan that is sucking out the fumes. Because if you aren't like right next to a door or a window, and you have to run this pipe pretty far, having something in line with that is just helping pull that air through that full line of tubing.
Now for normal like flat cutting, engraving, and scoring, this is doing an excellent job. I've done like several tests. If you just want to get like a ballpark for engravings in terms of speed and power, going all the way up to 1,200 millimeters per second, but you'll definitely see a big difference when you're looking at the cutting performance between the P3 and the P2S.
The P2S is 55 watts, so you definitely should see a big difference. But on the P2S basically once you get to 50 millimeters per second, even at 100% power, you're not able to cut through this eighth inch birch plywood.
With the P3 you can run it at 50 millimeters per second and only use 50% power. And then I tested this all the way up to 100 millimeters per second and it was still cutting fine.
And I also did like a quick cutting test on acrylic as well, and it does an excellent job.
Now a great thing about having more wattage is you can cut through thicker material. So this is 3 quarter inch poplar, and these are circles that I completely cut out.
And you can see in the footage it cut this out in one shot. So this is running like around 4 millimeters per second, and I was really surprised you didn't get like a ton of scoring. These are really nice, clean cuts.
And even like the through cut on the back, it really wasn't a lot of blowout, which is something you're going to find a lot of times when you're having to do these really thick cuts.
And they even give you the ability to do this in multiple passes if the material you're using is going to need that. So it can basically do a pass, drop the laser head down a little bit and run the pass again, so that the focus point where the laser is the most effective is dropping down the material as you're cutting.
I actually tried to do that with this wood where I ran it faster, but like multiple passes. But I found like the one pass a little bit slower, wound up doing a better job and giving me cleaner cuts anyway. So it was even easier to use.
And that ease of use and the full integration into the software brings me into how kind of xTool stands versus the competition. And I kind of see it comparing to cameras. So you could get like a big DSLR camera like what I'm filming with right now, or a phone camera, which is incredible and expensive.
But to use a DSLR, you've got to know about ISO and aperture and shutter speed and f-stop. But once you get all of that really dialed in, you can take super fast pictures and have really, really nice quality. But it's definitely not like the easiest to use from the start.
So I would compare that to some of the more professional style machines that you might find from Thunder or Aeon or OneLaser or even bigger machines that are still 80 watts and have a massive work area like this. They just like fully sit on the ground versus this one just sitting on a stand.
But to use those, you're going to have to get deep into Lightburn, which is a great piece of software, but it also isn't the easiest to use. And speaking of cameras, usually those machines will just have like a single camera and Lightburn's integration for cameras isn't like the best. They let you do general positioning, but like not something super crazy.
Now that industrial style laser approach or the DSLR camera approach, I would compare to xTool, which is going to be way more like the phone camera where you just hit one button, it pulls up and it's ready to take a picture. It's doing all of those auto adjustments and crazy stuff and now even taking like multiple pictures and combining them together where all of that complexity is kind of getting removed away.
So it's just like really easy to use. Pull out of your pocket, hit the button, take a picture, and there's your finished photo. Versus a DSLR, even if you're super fast taking the picture, you're still going to have to dump it on a computer, export it. It's going to be a lot more clunky.
So I find the full integration with machine and software is really, really good with xTool. So in the same way, using their suite of cameras, both in the top, the head and the sides, you can do some really cool stuff.
And we especially see that when we're not just working with like single pieces of material. So batch engraving. I just got a bunch of like anodized aluminum cards right here because all you have to do to do a batch is you just put this stuff kind of in there however you want.
And then using the onboard camera, it can take a picture and auto detect the boundaries of the material. What's really cool is that once you place, in this case, I just put "hello" in the very middle of this card, regardless of the orientation you have inside of the work bed, it's going to like auto place it on there for you.
And that's compared to if you're using a bigger industrial style machine, you more than likely are going to have to use some type of jig, which will be really great for repeatability. It's going to be the most precise possible.
But I found the results and like alignment on just like this quick test were really good. So if this is something you weren't doing all the time, but you just had a quick batch you wanted to throw together, this is going to be able to handle that and do an excellent job.
Now another cool advanced feature that the software is able to do because of the sensors has to do not with the cameras itself, but actually that IR sensor that is detecting the distance. Because normally you're just going to get the distance of one thing to get your thickness. But what if you have something in there that isn't the same thickness?
So I threw this like really rough cut out guitar body that has a slope on it. And then I engraved just "hello" on it. I'm just going to sand this off, but as a quick test.
[demonstration]
So there definitely is a curve on the end. And then using the IR sensor and the software, what it does is it creates a grid of dots. Then it takes a measurement reading at all of those dots. That's something that the P2S also did, but it took a really long time.
I found I never really used it just because it took so long. So this one goes much, much quicker, and it gives you like a 3D model of what's in the work bed.
So then when it's running, it's able to raise and lower that laser head as it's going. And I think I mentioned before that the autofocus just happens because of the bed, but it can also move the laser head itself. And I definitely find in those like curved surface movements, that's when you're starting to see that a lot.
Now the it should be and more confusing to do with like any laser, the amount of tumblers that I have completely destroyed in testing is pretty embarrassing with all the other machines that I've used. The rotary that you can get with the P3 does a great job.
It has a few indexing points on the side to kind of lock it into an exact position. So that then the machine knows always where it's going to be the center line of whatever curve thing you're trying to engrave.
But then going back into the phone type fully integrated system, it can do the same distance measurements that it did with that curved engraving, but it can do it on the tumbler itself. So you have something in there where the diameter isn't the same going all the way down—so higher up here, lower down there.
It can take distance reading down the surface of your tumbler and then map it just like it did with that curved surface to know exactly where it needs to be in focus.
And then what's super handy is it unwraps that tumbler. So you know like how far around whatever you're engraving is going to be. I find that is like the number one thing that I always get wrong as I wind up. It engraves it in the right spot, but it like starts here and wraps all the way around and looks really, really bad.
And so just the visual of having that in there is really handy.
Now xTool really got started with their diode lasers and specifically their xTool D1, which is an open gantry style machine. And from that, they have developed a lot of really nice diode modules that you can drop on machines.
So what's great about these is it's not a glass tube or a metal tube on the back. The actual laser is generated in this unit right here. Then you can just drop this on a gantry and it moves around.
Now specifically, this is an IR module. So an infrared module that unlike a traditional blue light diode allows you to do markings on metal. And a really cool feature that I don't think I've seen on any other machine is allowing you to put an IR module on the gantry of the xTool P3.
Now this is not the actual IR module that's going to go on there. And I don't have the one in the shop that they're actually going to use. So I haven't been able to test that, but you can kind of see how this is going to work.
What's great about that is if you do have some use cases where you need to mark on metal, you're still going to be able to use this overall form factor and all the camera integrations and everything to do that.
Now, a big caveat to that is this IR diode module is not the same thing as traditional fiber laser, where it's not just the wavelength of light that is different, but the actual way it's delivering all those photons to the material.
So fiber lasers are basically like blasting them all at once so it can mark into the metal. That's where you're going to see on like the F1 Ultra and now the new F2 Ultra. But having a way to mark on metal is really handy because the traditional CO2 is not able to do it.
Now, if you're comparing this to other machines, you'll probably see that this machine has a glass tube while other higher end desktop machines might have an RF tube. And a lot of times those RF machines are going to have faster acceleration. So it's usually like 3G versus this guy, which is 2G, which is still better than the P2S.
And I had the chance to chat to some of the engineers behind the P3. I basically asked them that question: why they went the glass route versus the RF route. What they were saying is they basically wanted to optimize for cutting versus just strictly engraving because to get an 80 watt RF tube would actually be insanely expensive.
I don't really know of any even industrial style machines that have wattage that high. So usually those RF tubes are going to be less in wattage and they're really going to be optimized for engravings. That's why typically you're going to see higher accelerations on those machines as well.
With this machine, they still wanted to give you the ability to engrave, but they especially wanted to give you the ability to cut.
One thing I reached out to xTool about is the differences in the controller from the P2S to the P3. More traditional four core MCU style controller, but with this machine, they also have that, but they've added on an MPU or a neural processing unit, which is super handy with AI processing.
I totally get that AI is a buzzword and people like to stamp that on, but in a really practical and important sense, they are tying in those eight infrared sensors to be able to do real time flame detection to tie back into like that full safety system they have built in.
So if you're comparing the P3 to the P2S, it's pretty big difference. And like, especially if we're talking about price, the P2S is at $3,700 and the P3 is at $7,000.
Now, if you do have the P2S, they have like a trade up program where you can get $500 off and you're not like trading in your machine for $500. You're just getting a coupon on a future purchase.
But in terms of specs, the P2S is 55 watts. This is 80 watts. And then the work bed and the depth is much bigger on this machine with like twice the overall speed, nicer cameras, and just overall, a higher build quality.
And you can save an additional $80 bucks if you need to use the promo code XTOOLBRANDON.
Now, one thing I haven't tested with this is their conveyor belt and pass-through integration. So this does have a pass-through right here and then on the back. And then they've got a conveyor belt system that can pass material through there.
I would love to know from you: what you think of this machine, what questions you might have about it and how you see it fitting in with the competition.
[laughter]
All right. Until next time, go make or break something in your shop. See you guys.
