When I wrote about my first impressions of the xTool M2, I had really only just started figuring out what this machine could do. Since then, I’ve had quite a bit more time to experiment with it, and I think I’m finally at the point where I can give you a proper first review.
I’ve now made several projects, including two Halloween miniatures and a tiny wooden house designed to sit in the soil of a real-life potted plant. I’ve also had a few projects that didn’t work out quite as planned. Ugh!
But honestly, those failures have probably taught me just as much about the M2 as the successful projects have.
I’ll show you all of them in this review – the successes and the failures.
Disclosure: xTool kindly provided me with the xTool M2 free of charge so that I could test it and share my experience. I was not paid to write this review, and xTool has had no influence over what I’ve written. All opinions—both positive and negative—are entirely my own.
There are still plenty of things I haven’t tried yet, so I don’t consider this my final review of the xTool M2!
As an Amazon, Etsy, xTool, and Anavrin associate, I earn a small commission from your purchase, with no extra charges for you.
What I’ve Actually Used the M2 For
Let’s see what I have actually created or TRIED to create lol!
My first project: a miniature school desk with my niece’s name on.
As this was a very quick first project, just after installing the machine and software and such, I don’t really have a video or multiple pictures of it, but it was pretty easy to do, straight from xTool’s platform on Atomm.com
My miniature fairy garden bridge, finally have one!
Finally, I have my miniature fairy garden bridge, something I always wanted to add to my fairy garden, but never found the time for to create it myself.
2 projects for Halloween
I finished 2 Halloween projects, a tiny coffin and a miniature swing, with a Black witch swinging on it. Now, these came with a few perks I need to continu to learn about.
And my swinging witch! 🙂
A Quick Tip: Resizing a Design in xTool Creative Space
For my Halloween projects, I needed to make the original designs smaller so they would work as miniatures. In xTool Creative Space, simply select the entire design, group all the elements together, and then resize the group by dragging one of the corner handles.
You can also enter the exact width or height in the size settings. Keep the proportions locked so the whole design scales down evenly without becoming stretched or distorted.
This way, I can resize suitable designs to a much smaller scale and turn them into miniature projects.
I used another file from Atomm.com again for this one, and it was amazing how the design just cut out properly, while the cutting lines were sooo close together! So precise, amazing! Check out the process in the video below.
The Machine Itself Was Surprisingly Easy to Set Up
Considering I had never used a laser cutter before, I found the physical setup of the xTool M2 surprisingly straightforward. I showed the complete process in my installation video, and there really wasn’t anything particularly complicated about getting the machine ready to use.
If you’re using the Desktop Smoke Purifier as I am, however, be aware that the M2 requires the correct connection cable and pipe adapters to connect the two properly.
My setup included these (as told to me by someone in the comments below my video), but it’s something worth checking when deciding which bundle and accessories you’re buying.
The Software Takes More Time to Learn
The machine was easy. The software? That has taken me a little longer!
To be fair, I think I made things unnecessarily difficult for myself in the beginning. I was eager to start making miniatures, off course, so I went straight to Etsy and purchased SVG files before I’d properly learned how xTool Studio works.
My advice to another complete beginner would be: don’t do what I did. Start with a few projects from Atomm.com first.
When you find a suitable project on Atomm, you can open it directly in xTool’s software, and much of the project is already prepared and completely aligned for you.
This gave me a much easier way to learn what the different settings actually do. Every time I’ve started with a suitable Atomm project, I’ve generally had far fewer problems. Perfect for beginners!
Click the picture below to go to my next YouTube video, where I explain more about xTool’s software and show you how I made my fairy garden bridge.
Once you start importing SVG files you’ve purchased elsewhere, there are more decisions to make yourself, and that can get confusing when you’re still learning the basics.
The Accuracy Has Really Impressed Me for Miniature Work
This is probably one of the most important things for me as a miniature maker, and so far I’m very impressed.
My latest project was a tiny wooden house designed to sit in the soil of a full-size plant pot.
Some of the individual parts and cut lines in that design were extremely close together—right down to millimeters. Looking at the file, I honestly wondered whether the laser would manage to cut everything without ruining the neighboring pieces.
It did. Perfectly.
The individual pieces came out accurately cut, despite how closely everything was positioned.
The M2’s camera system helps here as well.
There are two positioning cameras: a distant-view camera that shows the overall work area and a close-view camera for more precise positioning.
Being able to see the material and position the design over it before cutting is particularly useful when I’m trying to use the remaining space on a sheet of plywood.
Atomm Is a Great Starting Point—But Have a Good Look Around
I’ve spent quite a bit of time browsing Atomm now, and there is a huge selection of projects. There are already plenty of miniature-related designs, including furniture and small structures, and many projects are free while others only cost a few dollars.
I wouldn’t say every project I’ve come across is equally useful or equally well designed, so it’s worth spending some time searching rather than simply choosing the first miniature file you see.
For a beginner, though, I’ve found Atomm very useful.
For my own work, 3 mm plywood is currently the material that matters most, and so far the M2 has handled it very well.
The good news is that I’m nowhere near the machine’s maximum capability.
Miniature pieces cut out with the laser cutter 3 mm’s thick plywood
According to xTool, the 10W laser can cut up to 8 mm basswood plywood, while the 20W module can cut up to 10 mm basswood plywood in a single pass under its specified conditions.
That gives me plenty of room to experiment with thicker wood later, although for most of my dollhouse and miniature projects I expect I’ll continue using relatively thin plywood.
For our hobby, I probably won’t use other materials, but you should know the M2 isn’t limited to wood.
It can work with materials such as MDF, cardstock, felt, leather and certain dark/opaque acrylics, depending on the module and material.
I Really Like Having an Enclosed Machine
Another thing I appreciate is that the M2 is fully enclosed. When I’m laser cutting wood, I don’t want smoke and residue spreading throughout my crafting room.
I use mine together with the xTool Desktop Smoke Purifier, and for my particular setup I would strongly recommend it. xTool itself says that the smoke produced during processing should either be routed to an air purifier or exhausted outside through a window.
The Fire Detection Actually Worked When I Needed It
One safety feature I can definitely say I’ve tested—although not intentionally!—is the M2’s fire detection.
During one of my first attempts at cutting the miniature school desk, some of the small pieces had already been cut loose and moved from their original position. The laser then restarted cutting it where it shouldn’t, and suddenly the machine stopped and gave me a fire warning!
Which was a bit scary as a beginner, as you can imagine hahaha! (That’s where my husband bought a fire extinguisher to put in my crafting space-lol)
There wasn’t an actual fire, thankfully, but it was reassuring to see the safety system react when something wasn’t going according to plan.
Of course, that doesn’t mean you can walk away and leave the M2 running: you should never leave a laser cutter unattended. But after experiencing the warning myself, I’m certainly glad that fire detection is there.
What I Don’t Like / What Could Be Better
The Working Area Could Be Limiting for Larger Dollhouse Kits
There is a downside to working with bigger miniature projects.
The M2’s working area with either the 10W or 20W laser module is approximately 16.7 × 12.6 inches (426 × 320 mm). The 3 mm xTool plywood I’ve been using comes in sheets of roughly 11.8 × 11.8 inches.(300 × 300 mm).
That’s plenty for the small miniature projects I’ve made so far, but I can already see how a complete dollhouse or larger DIY (furniture) kit could become more complicated. There could simply be too many parts to fit onto one sheet.
That would mean splitting a project across several sheets of plywood and keeping track of which pieces belong where. It’s certainly possible, but for large miniature kits I can imagine it becoming a bit of a puzzle!
I think if you are planning a business with your own laser-cut DIY kits, this could be an issue, and you would need a more ‘professional’ one.
And honestly, I would purchase more than one laser cutter machine; if 1 needs repair, you can still fulfill your orders with the other one without delay!
Small Cut Pieces Can Move During Cutting
This is probably one of the biggest issues I’ve encountered so far when using the M2 for miniature projects.
When I’m cutting lots of tiny pieces from 3 mm plywood, some of those pieces can lift or move once the laser has cut completely around them. This isn’t just a theoretical problem: it has actually happened to me; see picture below.
(and this was how I set off the fire alarm that I spoke about higher up in this article)
During one project, an already-cut piece moved upwards. When the laser head later passed over that area again, it caught the loose piece and ended up moving the plywood itself.
Once the entire sheet has shifted, even slightly, the remaining cuts are obviously no longer perfectly aligned, or the laser just stopped processing. So I lost a piece of plywood and had to do it over again.
The M2 comes with magnets that can be used to support and position the material, but for the type of miniature work I’m doing, I personally haven’t found this setup ideal (and my husband either).
After experiencing this problem, I started using a honeycomb platform underneath my plywood instead, and I much prefer it for cutting lots of small wooden pieces.
It’s worth mentioning that xTool does not officially support a honeycomb panel for the M2, so this is my own solution rather than an accessory setup recommended by xTool.
Nevertheless, based on my own experience, I find it much more practical for this particular type of work.
For someone mainly engraving larger, flat materials, this may never be much of an issue.
But if, like me, you’re planning to use the M2 to laser-cut lots of very small wooden parts for dollhouse miniatures, it’s definitely something I think you should be aware of.
I Don’t Like Cutting Directly Above the Metal Baseplate
There’s another reason why I personally prefer using a honeycomb platform when laser-cutting plywood with the M2: the marks left on the metal baseplate underneath.
When the laser cuts completely through the plywood, some of that laser energy can reach the metal baseplate below. I noticed visible traces of my cuts on the plate almost immediately, and some of the marks actually looked surprisingly deep to me.
Now, I want to be fair here: I was, and still am, learning. It’s entirely possible that some of the deeper marks happened because I didn’t have the ideal settings yet, and thus was my own mistake.
xTool also states that marks, including permanent engraving marks, on the M2’s stainless-steel baseplate can occur during normal use.
What bothered me even more was the smell. When the laser left these marks on the baseplate, I noticed a very distinctive smell that, to me, smelled remarkably like burning plastic.
I can’t tell you exactly what was producing that smell, so I’m not going to claim that anything plastic was actually burning. I can only describe what I experienced.
Again, this is one of the reasons I’ve personally been much happier cutting plywood over a honeycomb platform. It creates separation between my plywood and the M2’s metal baseplate and supports those tiny cut-out pieces.
Interestingly, while I was writing this, I noticed that xTool now also, recently, offers an M2 CleanCut Panel designed to protect the baseplate!
I haven’t tested that panel myself, so I can’t compare it with my honeycomb setup, but it’s another option worth knowing about, ànd a sign that xTool really considers what the customers are worried about 🙂
My xTool M2 Review So Far
After several projects—some successful and some definitely not!—I feel like I understand the xTool M2 much better than I did when I wrote my first-impressions article.
There’s still a lot for me to learn, though. I’ve already tried using the ink cartridge to add colour to a project before laser-cutting it, but so far I haven’t managed to get that right.
Rather than pretending otherwise, I’ll keep experimenting with it until I understand it!
For now, I think I’ve written enough for one review, as beginners. 😅 There will definitely be more to come!
