The xTool S1 40W is the most impressive and safest laser I’ve reviewed so far. It can cut wood up to 20mm thick and engrave at 36,000mm/minute or 600mm/s. And the laser module can move up and down on a motorised z-axis, which combined with its built-in touch probe provides auto-focus and a few other clever tricks.
Its integrated enclosure can only operate with the lid closed giving it a Class 1 laser classification, comparable to a laser pointer you might use for presentations. And the enclosure has built-in fume extraction. I’ll also be reviewing the optional xTool air assist, honeycomb bed, and riser base.
I’ll put all xTool’s claims to the test and show exactly what this machine is capable of to see if it might be the right laser for you. So let’s take a closer look!
Overview
The xTool S1 comes in a large box very well packaged and almost completely assembled. You should be up and running in 30-60 minutes. I’d recommend following xTools unboxing video, but there’s also a nicely produced full colour A4 user manual in the box.
There are two wide velcro straps that you use to extract the entire machine from the packaging. All the extras are contained within boxes inside the machine itself. There is some very basic assembly.
First you need to remove the two back side stops that prevent the gantry moving in shipping.
Then you can attach the laser module which is held in place with two bolts.
Plug in the cable and air hose to the laser module and attach the autofocus depth probe which snaps into place with magnets so it can easily detach itself in case it gets snagged on anything.
You can then remove the fan cover to install the included 76mm flexible hose and adapter in its place. This hose is only around one metre when fully extended which is a little on the short side. If you have a window close enough you can use this hose to exhaust smoke out of the window. I’ll discuss other options shortly but you’ll definitely need some sort of fume extraction if you’re going to do any cutting with the S1.
Finally you can install the USB key around the back, plug in the hefty 275W power adapter, release the emergency stop button and turn the machine on. You won’t be able to operate the machine without the USB key in place – luckily xTool does provide a spare.
The machine also comes with a small pack of material samples, 2 spare lenses, a hex screwdriver, some grease and a set of triangular prisms to use when cutting if you don’t have a honeycomb base.
My machine bundle did come with the honeycomb base as well as the air assist pump, and the riser base which I’ll discuss shortly.
I’d consider some sort of air assist essential for cutting and even for engraving it keeps the laser lens cleaner. This is the smartest looking air pump I’ve seen and plugs directly into the machine – it doesn’t need an additional power supply. It would be even better if a pump was somehow integrated into the machine though.
It uses the standard 6mm hose so you could use another pump if you have one, but you’d lose the automatic features of the xTool one that I’ll also come back to.
The power cable for the air assist looks like a USB-C cable but it’s a proprietary connector and has to be inserted the right way around.
This is a very attractive looking machine and has bright LED lights at the front and back that are useful for positioning your materials.
The cabling is immaculate and all tucked away neatly – a far cry from some diode lasers I’ve tested in the past. The build quality is decent but there’s a lot of plastic and xTool warns against placing anything on top of the machine since it may distort the machine. Which is easier said than when you have a large flat surface and space is limited! The choice of materials do make the machine light enough for one person to move around, without the riser base at least, one big advantage over a similarly sized CO2 machine like xTool’s P2. The S1 weighs 20kg and you can see its dimensions on screen.
You can use the S1 with xTool’s free XCS software or Lightburn if you’re prepared to lose some functionality which I’ll mention as we go. I tested the S1 with both but I’d recommend at least starting off with XCS. Apart from anything else you’ll need to connect it to XCS for firmware updates.
Connect the supplied USB-C cable to your laser and computer and open up XCS. Click on Connect Device in the top right and accept any firmware updates.
At this point you can switch the machine to use the S1’s built in WiFi from the settings menu. Most of these settings you can leave as their defaults, but I changed the “Exhaust time after processing” from 10 seconds to 30 seconds to give the machine as much time as possible to clear any smoke and fumes before you open the lid.
I’m not going to cover how to use XCS in this article, but there are some excellent tutorials online that I’ll try and link to down below.
Arguably the most useful feature, which only works in XCS, is the real-time coordinate system. A red cross in XCS displays the exact position of the laser module’s position – even when moving the laser by hand. This makes lining up jobs very easy.
You can position the laser where you want on your workpiece, then drag the artwork to the red cross in XCS which will snap into position. This feature also provides further benefits I’ll cover in the next section.
The auto-focus adjustment is another time saving feature I’ve not seen since I looked at the Two Trees TS2 a while back. The laser module sits on rails driven by a stepper motor. When you press the Auto-Measure crosshair in XCS, the depth probe on the side of the machine is ejected and the laser module is moved down so the probe just touches the workpiece to set the exact height and therefore focus. The laser module then moves across the back right of the machine to reset the probe. Make sure the red laser crosshair is over your workpiece before starting this process.
Performance
My S1 comes with a 40W laser module, but a 20W module and 2W infrared module for engraving metal are also available.
With the 40W module you get a usable cutting area of 498mm x 319mm (19.6 x 12.6”) which is similar to the xTool’s D1 Pro I looked at recently – but more of a rectangle than a square.
The 40W module has spot size of 0.08 x 0.10mm, which is pretty good for a 40W laser and smaller than the 40W module on the D1 Pro. This should make it possible to engrave and cut more intricate designs. In my testing I didn’t notice much difference compared to my 40W D1 Pro. Both machines can engrave and cut with enough detail for my requirements.
The S1 is considerably faster than the D1 Pro though and one of the fastest lasers I’ve tested. It can reach speeds of 600mm/s, or 36,000mm/minute which is comparable in movement speed to a CO2 laser like the xTool P2.
I started off testing engraving with the S1. I printed a material test grid on some plywood to see just how fast this machine is. Once you’ve sent the job to the laser, you’ll be prompted to press the front button to start the job.
Its higher speeds only really make sense for bigger jobs. For this small test grid it’s actually faster engraving at 300mm/s than at 600mm/s where it has to significantly overshoot the engraving to accelerate and decelerate to and from its maximum speed.
But even on a not particularly stable worktop, the machine is smooth and refined in operation.
Next I tried engraving a round slate tile. Unfortunately the S1 has no built-in camera for alignment like the P2. But it does have an arguably more accurate way to position your artwork on your material if you’re using XCS.
First set the focus of the laser as before. Then click on “Start marking” under “Mark processing area”. You have a choice of rectangle, circle, polygon and straight line, but you can change this selection in the next screen if you want. Manually move the laser module to one edge of the slate and press the front button of the laser. Move to another edge of the slate and again press the front button. Do this one last time on another edge to complete the marking and then click on “End marking”.
Click on “Done” and you’ll see the exact position of the tile in your work space. The machine does beep very loudly when you press the button for marking and starting jobs. Fortunately you can turn off “Buzzer reminders” in settings if this annoys you.
Prepare your artwork and resize it to fit the tile, then drag it to the slate outline. It’ll snap to the centre of the tile. It couldn’t be easier and it makes the S1 a real pleasure to use. You could do something similar in Lightburn, but it’s not as intuitive and you don’t see the live position of the laser in your work space.
xTool provides settings for a few materials including a stone coaster which I selected. I chose to Score – which is basically the same as Cut but with lower power and faster speed.
This coaster came out pretty well with xTool’s default settings.
As did an image I did of a deer on some plywood. Here I also cut out a circular coaster from the wood after the engraving.
To properly test the maximum speed I lasered this same image using almost the entire working space of the S1 which took around 30 minutes.
I also tried engraving leather, cork and stainless steel which all worked as expected and I got comparable results to my D1 Pro with similar settings.
The marking feature in XCS can also be used to set up batch jobs. As before, go into the marking menu and select your first marking area mode. Here I’m selecting “Rectangle” for this metal coated business card.
In its default highest home position, the laser is usually too far from the workpiece for the red alignment crosshair and it will appear quite blurry which makes accurate alignment tricky. I like to drop the laser a couple of centimetres for a sharper focus and more accurate alignment. Just remember to home the Z-axis again when you’re done to return it back to its original position. You can access the controls from the bottom right of the XCS screen. I hope there’s a firmware update from xTool to do this for you.
After marking the rectangle click on End marking. You can now continue adding marking areas. Here I’m selecting “circle” to mark this cork coaster. I’m not sure what the limit is here – I tried marking ten areas without any issues. It’s quick moving the laser with your hand, but I’d like to see software controls to move the laser more precisely here in the marking window.
Click “Done” to return to the XCS work area. You can now drag your various artwork into the marked areas. I made things a little difficult for myself here with the cork coaster being much thicker than the business card. I had to laser both jobs separately, re-setting the focus distance for the coaster, but both jobs came out pretty well.
I used the built in XCS settings for the business card which came out fine, but the cork coaster was a little burnt with the same settings.
Upping the speed to 300mm/s looked better.
For the best results you do need a little time getting square or rectangular jobs exactly parallel and perpendicular to the gantry.
Or you could use the polygon marking area which will take into account any skew by measuring all corners
The S1 can also engrave uneven services using its automatic focusing system. I tried this feature on a wooden salad spoon. First off you need to make sure the object is secured – I used some Blu Tack. You also need to make sure there aren’t any abrupt depth changes or angles greater than 15° or the process may fail.
In XCS you need to change the laser setup from “Laser flat” to “Curve process”. Click on “Curve Measure” and mark the two corners of the area you want to probe. Here you do get controls for the accurate placement of the laser, or you can just move it by hand. You then choose how many points you want to probe before starting the measurements. I left it at its defaults and the machine went about probing and measuring a 4 by 4 grid.
You can see a 3D preview of the final resulting mesh which you can move around with your mouse. I used the Smoothness and Tension sliders to add detail to the mesh via some sort of interpolation.
You can then drag and position your artwork in the defined work area, choose your settings and send it to the laser.
The laser module moves up and down on its z-axis to keep the focus precise and the resulting engraving looks pretty good.
Next I tried cutting with the S1. I got similar cutting performance to the xTool D1 Pro also with a 40W laser module, but there are some key advantages. I do use the D1 Pro with its custom enclosure, but the enclosure on the S1 is on another level. Most importantly, the laser won’t operate without the lid being closed, which actually makes the S1 a Class 1 laser – comparable to a laser pointer you might use for presentations. So much safer than your typical diode laser.
The other advantage of this enclosure is the visibility. The laser safe acrylic lid covers a good proportion of the laser, and together with the built in LED strips it’s very easy to see what’s going on. It also makes the machine fairly quiet which I’ll discuss more later.
There are a few other safety features on the S1. There are built-in flame detection sensors that will stop the laser if they detect a flame. This is the first laser I’ve tested where these sensors actually work. I was cutting some stacked 6mm black MDF a little too slowly and I could see the MDF was starting to catch. The sensors did indeed trigger and the machine stopped and beeped continuously.
There’s also the usual tilt and impact detection which will stop the machine if it’s tipped or knocked.
The only slight oddity on the safety front is the red emergency stop button is right at the back on the side of the machine. This should be much more accessible, but at least the front button can pause the machine.
I tried cutting a variety of materials, mostly using the honeycomb bed, which is far more convenient than the supplied triangular prisms. It also comes with four useful low profile magnetic hold downs which are excellent for thinner materials.
As I alluded to already, cutting performance is very similar to the D1 Pro with the 40W module which I reviewed recently, so you can take a look at that review for more examples of what a machine like this is capable of if you like.
One potential advantage of the S1 is the motorised focus adjustment. This allows you to drop the focus to cut thicker materials. In XCS, you can turn this feature on under “Lower the focus”. xTool suggests starting with 3mm for thicker materials, up to half the thickness of the material you’re cutting, although it won’t let you set more than 6mm.
I tried this feature with various materials of different thicknesses with varying offsets. I found 3mm was the sweet spot for most thicker materials, and I could get away with 6mm in some thicker soft woods to get the full 20mm cut. It definitely requires experimentation with your specific materials.
It would be nice to have a feature that lowers the focus for multiple passes, perhaps dropping one mm per pass but that’s not yet possible automatically in XCS.
You can do this in Lightburn though. Enable Z-axis in Settings and then in cut settings enter the number of passes and the amount you want to offset each pass in “Z step per pass”.
In XCS a workaround would be to duplicate your cut path, assign each pass to a different layer, and set a lower focus offset for each path.
I tried these offset passes in XCS and Lightburn but got variable results. You need a very clean cut for the laser to penetrate through the existing kerf. I will try this with a little more air using my air compressor to see what’s possible and report back in a future video or article.
I briefly mentioned the air assist which is an optional extra with the S1. It’s still only a 30L/minute air pump, but I do like its “Auto” feature. By default any cut will have the air at maximum and engraving will drop the air output to 1. It’s nice not having to think about turning on the air assist, or adjusting it for cutting and engraving.
You can tweak these outputs in settings inside XCS, but the defaults work fine and you can manually override them with the large dial.
xTool boasts that the S1 can cut 20mm thick wood, 15mm black acrylic and 0.1mm stainless steel in one pass. I confirmed their claims in wood and stainless steel but could only just cut through 10mm acrylic in one pass and I wouldn’t say the resulting cut would be particularly usable.
I always like to test these machines with a real project. I needed to replace the top of my Festool MFT I use for woodworking. This has a grid of perfectly CNC’d 20mm holes, exactly 96mm apart in 18mm MDF. You can use these holes for precise cuts using a track saw and machined stainless steel dogs that sit in these holes without any play. Festool charge an insane price for this top, so I went about machining one myself.
I designed a template I could use to cut these 20mm holes with a router and a 30mm guide bush exactly 96mm apart and square to each other. I cut the template from 6mm black MDF.
The guide bush of the router slots into the template with no play and the template is attached to some MDF with double sided tape. The holes can then be plunged with a 20mm bit in a router.
I 3D printed some locating dogs that let me move the template around a larger piece of wood keeping everything aligned.
I also had to cut a base for the router to take account of the thickness of the guide bush – I cut this from 6mm birch plywood.
I still need to make a few refinements but this all worked pretty well and shows just how capable and versatile a machine like this is.
In version two of this template I’ll add some locating pins for perfect alignment of the first row of holes. I’d ideally use 12mm MDF for the next version but wasn’t expecting even this 40W laser to be powerful enough to cut dense MDF at this thickness, but in a few test cuts it could. I just had to drop the focus by 3mm and it cut through in one pass – and this MDF measured just over 13mm.
I’ve not yet discussed fume extraction which is essential for cutting. The built-in extraction fan does a decent job if you have a window close by, but for better results, especially if you’re venting a little further away you’ll want an inline fan.
I hooked up the S1’s hose to my 6” extractor fan via a 3D printed adapter. I vent the machine to a window with around 3 metres of ducting and the fan clears the smoke very effectively. I have the extractor plugged into a smart plug so I can operate it with Alexa.
This does add some additional noise to the laser although theoretically you could remove the noisier built in fan. Without the inline extractor on I measured 60dB one metre away with my decibel meter. That was the noise of the laser moving albeit slowly, the air assist at maximum output and the built in extractor fan. This increased to 62dB when I turned the inline extractor on with Alexa. Even with a powerful extraction fan and the enclosed design, there are still fumes when cutting so there is still room for improvement.
With the standalone machine material thickness is quite limited – especially if you’re using the honeycomb bed. It can only accommodate 15mm of material with the honeycomb installed, or 42mm without for engraving.
If you want more capacity you’ll need the optional riser base. You’ll definitely need the riser base if you want to use the rotary or the automatic conveyor feeder, which allows cutting and engraving of material up to 3 metres in length.
Confusingly there are two riser bases available depending on where you are based. One which opens at the front for the conveyor feeder, and the one I have which is closed and doesn’t support the conveyor feeder.
The riser that has an opening comes with safety glasses and changes the machine from a Class 1 to Class 4 laser and isn’t available in Europe. Which means the conveyor feeder also isn’t available here.
I installed the closed riser which is a fairly straightforward process. The xTool S1 honeycomb bed is pretty much an essential purchase if you go with the riser since there’s a 70mm minimum cutting and engraving height with the riser installed.
Cleverly the honeycomb bed can sit either on the base of the machine, or halfway up on the two supporting rails front and back. With the honeycomb base in this position you’ve got 0mm to 45mm capacity. And with the honeycomb lowered to the base, you’ve got 44mm to 99mm of capacity. You can remove the honeycomb all together for 125mm capacity, if you want to use the xTool RA2 Pro rotary attachment, which plugs into a port behind the front of the machine.
Conclusions
xTool have done a great job with the S1. It’s the most capable, refined and most importantly safe diode laser I’ve tested so far. It would be very hard to go back to using your typical diode laser without an integrated enclosure.
But of course all this comes at a cost – it’s also the most expensive diode laser I’ve tested by some margin. And that’s before you consider the optional extras, many of which you really need to make the most out of the machine.
Prices and bundles will vary so please check the links down below. Currently the Basic Kit with the honeycomb and air assist is the minimum I’d go for, but I’d also recommend adding the riser base – you’re quite limited in vertical capacity without it. If you need to engrave round objects you’ll also need the rotary tool – but that is something you can always add later. xTool does an inline extractor too which might also be necessary depending on where you’re venting. I’ll provide a link down below to theirs and a cheaper option that I’m using which works ok.
If you’re mostly engraving with only occasional cutting in thinner materials, you could save some money opting for the 20W machine. The smaller dot size of the 20W should provide a little more detail, and the laser module’s physically smaller size gives you a slightly larger working area. You can always add the 40W model later – it’s a modular machine.
The S1 is still a lot cheaper than xTool’s CO2 P2 machine and it’s far more portable than the P2 if you’re frequently moving things around. If you’re limited for space this might be more important than you think. And you could get two S1’s for the price of the P2, so for a small business unless you have to cut clear acrylic or really need the camera, it might be an option worth considering. I hope to test the P2 soon for a more detailed comparison, so look out for that.
xTool’s XCS software has come on leaps and bounds since I first used it, but a lot of professionals will still prefer to use Lightburn. Although you can use Lightburn with the S1, you lose a lot of functionality and I found operation of the machine a little flakey and inconsistent compared with XCS. For example, often the focus height would not reset and you have to redo the “Detect” operation as it’s called in Lightburn. I do hope they improve the Lightburn integration over time.
I’ll continue testing the S1 and I should be trying it out with the rotary tool and hopefully the 2W IR module, very soon. I might get a chance to experience xTool support again too which hasn’t been necessary so far. If you have any specific questions on the machine, please do ask in the comments section of the accompanying YouTube video If I get enough questions I can do a follow-up video and article, with any additional information I’ve uncovered.
While you’re there, please also consider subscribing to my YouTube channel where I’m releasing videos every week on the latest technology and how to get the most out of it. If you tap the bell icon when you subscribe you’ll get a notification as soon as I release a video, and there’ll be a link to my site here for the written article. YouTube is also the best place to leave a comment. I read all of them and respond to as many as I can!
If you use my links below, I get a small commision which helps support my YouTube channel and website – thank you! If you’re based in the US, you can also use the voucher code TechMan80 for $80 off!
Also for a limited time, xTool will give you up to £500 or $500 off a new machine, if you trade in your old laser – from any manufacturer! And you can still keep the old machine.
xTool UK: https://uk.xtool.com/?ref=ymRuLqseaV9rHK&utm_medium=null&utm_source=influencer
xTool US: https://www.xtool.com/?ref=ymRuLqseaV9rHK&utm_medium=4965&utm_source=influencer
xTool EU: https://www.xtool.eu/?ref=ymRuLqseaV9rHK&utm_medium=null&utm_source=influencer
xTool France: https://fr.xtool.com/?ref=ymRuLqseaV9rHK&utm_medium=null&utm_source=influencer
xTool Germany: https://de.xtool.com/?ref=ymRuLqseaV9rHK&utm_medium=null&utm_source=influencer
Amazon link:
xTool S1 40W Laser Engraver Cutter: https://amzn.to/489uCp3
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