Makeblock xTool D1 Laser Air Assist How to Explained

We just added an air assist to our X-Tool D1 laser. We tested a bunch of different materials and you wouldn't believe the results. We'll show you what we learned right now. What is up? Welcome back. If you like to do it, build it, and make it, so do we. And we have a new video each week. This week we're going to be blowhards about laser air assist. Yes, so you know we have our X-Tool D1 laser. We love this little guy, but we have a new cool tool for it. It's the air assist pump and we're going to tell you all about how this air assist pump works, why it works, why you should use it, and how to install it. What is air assist? Air assist is the act of blowing high pressure air onto your workspace while you're cutting. Why should I use laser air assist? I have three reasons why you should use laser air assist. One, it minimizes the heat as it leaves the laser nozzle. Two, it dissipates the heat as the laser contacts your work surface. And three, it removes smoke and debris while it's cutting. And what are some of the benefits of using laser air assist? In the long run, it's more profitable because it makes your cutting faster and cleaner. It'll maximize the thickness of your materials. So we want to cut quarter inch MDF with this machine. We'll want that laser beam and that smoke efficient and clean so that it's maximum thickness. Again, cleaner finish. There's less char and less burn mark because the smoke isn't there. It's blowing that smoke away quickly so it cuts through efficiently and cleanly. And without that smoke and residue, it's a lot easier to paint. True. Less cleanup at the end, no sanding. The cleaner it is, the less sanding you'll have to do. And essentially there's a lower production cost because you'll be able to cut cleaner, faster, more efficiently. And this little kit, it was only about a hundred and twenty dollars to purchase and add on. And it'll save you time and money for sure. Improved efficiency. It's proven that you'll cut 10 to 20 percent faster than with just a laser beam alone. And lastly, increased safety. By blowing away the smoke and debris, there's less likely that you will have flare-ups or fires. Next up, let's talk about what comes in the kit. This cute little air pump with some rubber feet. It helps with noise cancellation. A hose. A new nozzle for the laser. A new shroud for the air hose. It has a little hole on the side for the air hose. Some air hose extensions. A hose clip. Some allen wrenches. And that's about it. That's it. Super simple. Some instructions. All right, let's go ahead and do the installation. Step one, we're going to attach our hose extension piece on the side of our pump here. This little rubber hose we're going to slide on here. Super easy. I'll be your Vanna White. I'll hand you things. Okay, now I need the quick release hose piece. I don't know. I do know it has a quick release on it. We'll slide that down in there. Let me get it all the way in there. All right, we'll put our hose in the end. Slides right in. All right, our pump is ready to go. Yep. Next step, we're going to take our little housing off. Just loosen our set screw and the little laser housing here slides right out. And then we're going to, oh perfect. I told you I'm your Vanna. We're going to remove the shroud. This orange little casing here by loosening these tiny little set screws here. You don't think you have to remove them. I think you just need to release, just release the tension on it a little bit. While we have our shroud off, we're going to go ahead and use a little alcohol wipe to clean the laser lens. Get that little sensor next to it. I don't know what it does. All right, she's looking shiny and clean. Got a little stuff off of there. We'll put the new laser head in. So this is already here. We're just going to slide this right over. Where's my air assist going to come in at? Over here. Has a little air assist hole here on the side and you'll want to make sure that's pointing to the same side where the depth adjustment tool here is. You know you got the right side. This is a little set screw to make sure it doesn't move. Goes in that one. Oops. Put it in the air assist hole. Goes in this hole. What's that name? What's that game? Kaplinko? Kaplinko. Yeah, oh Plinko. Plinko. This is a little set screw that kind of keeps it in place. This is now right on top as I'm holding it. All right, you can feel it get nice and tight. Shroud, you'll want to make sure that the little hole for the air assist is pointing facing you. For the same side as the focus. Same side as the focus level lever. We'll tighten our little set screws back. Let me make sure that's on all the way. This is the hose attachment piece that slides into the side of the shroud into the laser cover. I'm just going to screw that right in and that needs to be facing up. So here's our assembly now. Now we're going to add our hose holder on the top piece here. So we're going to loosen these little guys. I need the bigger one. No, that's a screwdriver. Do I have a screwdriver back here? Yeah, neither of these work. Now we're going to install our hose holder right here on the top. We need to loosen these screws here. This does require a phillips head screwdriver. Again, this is all on the same side as the focus tool. And you want to make sure that the little hose tool is facing towards the front of the housing here. It comes with two new screws. I think maybe these are a little bit longer because you're adding some depth because of the hose holder. Hose holder. It's hard to say. It is. All right, pretty simple, right? Now we'll put our housing assembly back into the gantry. Tighten up. We'll run our, oh, I told you. Gotta flip it. That was my fault. I put the holes in the wrong spot. Yeah, I guess. Screws in. Do as I say, not as I do. I did a horrible Vanna. I kind of double checked it, but I think I looked at it wrong or something. I was like, yes, it's definitely facing forward. All right, there you go. All right, we'll slide our hose down through the little hose holder and into the white quick release clamp down there. Make sure that's in all the way. I can't tell for sure. I think so. Yeah, there you go. There it goes. I did push the little lever down to make sure that it snapped in place. Seems a little loose. Should I try and screw it one more time? All right, she's in. She's in. That's a lot of hose. Yeah, I think. Does it tell you to attach or clamp the hose down to anything? Nope, it doesn't. No zip ties, no nothing. Do we have any zip ties back here? No, I'm going to leave it and watch it operate before and see if I need to zip tie it down. I think it might be okay. It doesn't look like it's going to hang down, but I will keep an eye on it. Our air assist is installed and on. You can barely hear the little pump running. I didn't know it was on the table. That's how quiet it is. I thought you put it on the floor. No, it's running and it's right here. You can hear the air blowing through the grate that we have down here. But other than that, it really does not add much noise at all. No, that's pretty quiet. Yeah, I'm super excited. Next up we'll do some test cuts. What do we have Garrett? We have some eighth inch birch plywood. We have some quarter inch MDF. We have some red acrylic. This looks like eighth inch or three millimeter. This is part of that materials pack that came with X-Tool. And a little piece of pine. Yep, a little piece of pine, hardboard. We're going to do some engraving on that. See how it does with and without the air assist. All right, let's do some test cuts. We'll come back and chat about them. Yeah, all right. We'll start with the easiest. I mean, I noticed the big difference on the eighth inch MDF, mainly in the residue. And then for the square, I had to punch it out. The square without the air assist didn't come out as easily as the pieces with the air assist. Yeah, they literally just fell out. Yeah, the same with the acrylic. The items with the air assist look a little cleaner on the edge. And I had to punch the star out of the acrylic. No, no, it wasn't a big win on the acrylic, but I think the air assist won. And then the MDF, there was a lot of flare-ups without the air assist. But with the air assist, I didn't see any flare-ups that I noticed. Right, so if you're looking to cut maybe some of the door rounds that we offer and you're going to be using quarter inch like we do, highly recommend the air assist. Not only for more power and cleaner cuts, but for safety reasons too. Yeah, talking about more power. In the engraving piece, the one with the air assist looks a little darker and a little deeper than the one without the air assist. And I'm wondering if the smoke. The smoke, yeah. Was cutting down on that power of the laser. Yeah. Yep. All right, what do you think? You're going to put an air assist on your laser? Do you have an air assist on your laser? What type of air assist are you using? And then what's next for our X-Tool? You know what we need? What do we need? The honeycomb tray. Honeycomb tray. We don't have it. We were able to use the Glowforge tray, but if you're going to get the X-Tool, I know it's another $120 add-on, but it's definitely worth it. It keeps those flare-ups from the bottom. The laser goes through. Sometimes that smoke will get trapped between the two boards if you have it resting on another board and gets to be a mess back there. So you can join us when we add the honeycomb tray. That's really just sliding it up underneath there. Huge thanks to all of our patrons. We love you guys. You're what makes it possible and we love interacting with you over there on Patreon. You guys get some free SVGs. We get to chit-chat with our monthly Zoom call. Oh yeah, our monthly Zoom call. Some outtakes, some funny stuff. You guys are great. We're like literally a crafting family over there. We are about out of time, so if you're not going to join us for this week's after show, we will see you next week where we'll do it, build it, and make it again. And this week's after show is going to be from our cruise ship. Oh yeah, that's right. These are too small to balance. I have nothing to balance. Here, you can balance your acrylic, but you have to take your pretty design away. Oh, all right. Now don't drop it because that thing is like deadly on the corners. Oh yeah, it's like a Chinese star. Yeah, it is.