I know, stacking dimes require years of practice and certainly there is a lot of pride that you take to show off the perfect dime-shaped beads you just put on top of a custom gas tank you just made for your sweet custom Harley Pan Head Bobber (or Evo, Evo, whatever). Trust me, I put some pretty unfriendly beads in my time, I understand.
XlaserLab has put out a guaranteed delivery kickstarter for the very portable and beginner-friendly X1 Pro laser welder…it also cuts, cleans and removes rust…and it runs at 120/240V!
To be honest, the X1 Pro gets a bit of a shame with personal experience with traditional torch welding, MIG and Caveman Stick welding. It is designed to be very simple so beginners can pick it up and start laying the perfect dime even with ultra-thin materials up to 8000 inches (0.2 mm) without melting or even deforming the project. It does not require shielding gas and can lay beads four times faster than traditional welding machines. That doesn’t mean it’s under the pros either. Those who weld for a living are also making good use of the X1 Pro.
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It’s like a welding game shark cheat code.
Although half-inch armor plating cannot be welded to the dozer, the X1 Pro ensures that the steel is processed to less than an eighth (0.118 inch/3 mm). So the X1 Pro works perfectly with all 18-20 gauge sheet metal in the garage classic cars that have meant to be restored in the last decade. Also, laser welding produces much less heat than MIG, so you don’t have to worry about warping while patching out all these rust spots.
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Really, X1 doesn’t even produce any slag at all, so you don’t even need to grind it. But if you have to grind and clean the welding, this is probably not the right product for you.
There is also a smaller, more portable 26.5 lb (12 kg) version called the X1, which can weld everything from stainless steel and carbon steel to galvanized sheets, up to 1/16 (0.0625 inch/2mm). It doesn’t have the same cutting, cleaning, or CNC compatibility features found in its big siblings, but if you’re just trying to weld things together, it has what it needs.
And I said you can even use it to weld the underwater?
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The X1 Pro has a slightly larger package of 42 lb (19 kg) but with more features if you have more heft. In addition to the same material type as the X1 (slightly thick, up to about an eighth inch), it can also be processed with just 1/16 of the time. Yes, even copper. When tackling brass with the X1 Pro, the laser burns less when it’s much more concentrated and accurate, and doesn’t produce as much heat as TIG or MIG (i.e., unless you try to burn zinc with the cleaning feature). So brazed any more for those thick brass bits!
Aside from the slow, sturdy whole side of the X1 Pro, it is the welder’s rust removal feature. 90% of strong welding have enough expansion material to operate. The X1 Pro can burn rust from the surface from about 1/4 inch (0.276 inch/7 mm) to about 2/3 inch (0.669 inch/17 mm) while holding the button down. I won’t fight wire brushes for days anymore.
The X1 Pro also functions as a modular laser cutter, allowing you to easily reduce material from 20,000 minutes (0.5 mm) to less than 1/8 the thickness (3 mm). You can either cut the handheld or mount it on a CNC machine and start plotting the perfect cut.
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The X1 has several dials on the front, making it easy to choose the right settings for the type of material and thickness. The X1 Pro features a touchscreen with 16 different languages, allowing you to easily punch welding, cutting or cleaning parameters and dial in its complete temperature and width.
There are also many accessories for the X1 Pro: wire feeders, foot pedal switches, special nozzles, and more. At the time of writing, you can also receive free welding gloves for free, but all the videos that watched all the X1 Pro’s work are Gloresless, showing just how easy and safe the laser welder is.
So, if you want a new fun tool to distort metal, grind it for a few days, or get a quick job done (C’mon, that’s a laser!), check out the Kickstarter on the X1 Pro!
More background for the company: xlaserlab
