And of course, the ability to fit a blade tool for cutting heat transfer vinyl and fabrics.
Is this the ultimate maker machine?
But the xTool M1 from MakeBlock intrigued me.
That makes it a really versatile 2-in-1 crafting tool.
And that’s all contained within a safe working box with LED lighting and a fan extractor.
Is this the ultimate maker tool?
It’s not a Kickstarter, and will ship immediately.
The working area inside is 30cm deep, 42.7cm wide, and 12cm high.
This isn’t the biggest engraving area I’ve come across, but it’s certainly not small either.
It can easily fit a standard sheet of HTV vinyl or an A4 sheet of card stock.
In the standard configuration, you’re limited to 15mm thick.
Everything inside is very neatly laid out with a cable tray and nothing dangling.
It’s not compatible with LightBurn.
The XCS software is remarkably easy to pick up, but is a little basic compared to LightBurn.
The xTool M1 also uses a laser to automatically measure the thickness of your material if it’s non-standard.
In my experience, it was mostly accurate, to within around 1mm or so.
Finally, ensure you’ve selected whether or not you’re using the risers.
The XCS software has some basic drawing and text tools which should be sufficient for simple projects.
Technically, the software is still in beta, so I expect more features will be added in time.
If there are too many parts for one operation, they’ll be separated into different workspaces.
It’s here where I missed LightBurn the most.
Hopefully, XCS can replicate this behavior in the future and implement a proper layering system.
Blade Cutting
Switching from laser engraving to blade cutting is remarkably simple.
The first step is to fit the cutting tool.
You’ll also need to fit one of the two cutting mats.
However, they came out nicely with very clean lines.
This is only possible with a powerful and sharply focused laser.
I also tried a larger item using a rasterized image.
This takes a lot longer than vectorized engraving and cutting, which moves only where the line is needed.
Blade Sample Outputs
Next, I turned my attention to the bladed cutting feature.
Your vinyl will lay on top of this, shiny-colored side down.
The blade will cut the dull whitish side.
Lastly, your design must be mirrored horizontally, because you’re cutting it from the reverse side.
Is The xTool M1 The Ultimate Maker Machine?
But again, it does need to pair with a heat press of some sort.
The positing camera is also an incredibly helpful feature that I underestimated the utility of.
It’s going to be very hard to review another engraver that doesn’t feature one at this point.
It’s that mid-level user that may struggle and be frustrated by the simplicity of XCS compared to LightBurn.
There’s no question in my mind if thats worth it or not.
