Welding isn’t the easiest skill to learn, requiring a lot of patience and repetition to regularly put together strong and consistent welds. Add in the fact that you’re dealing with high-temperature equipment and it gets very intimidating very fast. The XLaserLab X1 Pro looks to make welding much more approachable.
Unlike traditional welding equipment that use an electric arc to melt and fuse metal, the device uses a focused high-density laser beam that, the outfit claims, enables more precise and cleaner welds without requiring all that much skill. Granted, it won’t produce the same amount of welding power as your standard MIG weld kit, but it will allow you to carry out most common welding tasks you’re likely to come across in your everyday adventures.
The XLaserLab X1 Pro uses a fiber laser light source that produces an average laser power of 700W. It can output the laser either in pulses or in continuous waves, allowing you to produce different types of welds, depending on your needs, with the laser being precise enough to let you weld steel sheets as thin as 0.5mm. While it’s not powerful enough to let you fuse half-inch steel bars, it can penetrate stainless steel, galvanized sheet, and carbon steel materials up to 3mm thick, as well as aluminum, brass, and copper up to 2mm, so this is incredibly useful for a whole load of tasks. Because it uses lasers, it minimizes spark splashing, too, making it a lot safer than traditional welding systems.
One of the neater things about this is the fact that it works for welding on the water. According to the outfit, you can safely submerge the welding tip into water with no danger whatsoever, so you can use it to weld stuff in waterlogged environments. Granted, we’re not exactly sure what kind of situations this capability will come handy in, but it’s definitely a nice thing to have on tap.
The XLaserLab X1 Pro isn’t just a welding machine, by the way, as the laser can also be used as a rust remover, allowing you to quickly clean rusting metals with ease. Additionally, it can be used as a laser cutter, with the ability to cut through stainless steel, carbon steel, and galvanized steel up to 3mm thick, although it can only handle 2mm thick aluminum alloys, 1mm thick brass, and 0.5mm thick copper. They have a detailed list of the recommended laser power and frequency settings for each type and thickness of material, so you just follow those and you should be able to execute any of the available tasks pretty easily.
The welding machine measures 18.5 x 13.2 x 8.1 inches (depth x height x width), so it’s compact enough to throw in the boot of the car for taking on the go, although it does weigh 42 pounds, so you don’t exactly want to walk around with this thing in tow. It uses nitrogen and argon as shielding gases, with a recommended flow of 10 to 15 liters per minute.
A Kickstarter campaign is currently running for the XLaserLab X1 Pro. You can reserve a unit for pledges starting at around $1,704.
