The Garage Machine I Wish I Had Bought Sooner: An xTool S1 Story

Four years ago I bought the wrong laser. I did what most beginners do: I looked at the price first, talked myself into a compact diode machine with a bed about the size of a sheet of paper, and told myself it was plenty. For about six months it was plenty. Then the cutting board orders started coming in from the craft fairs, and I found myself standing in the garage at 11 p.m. rotating a board by hand because the design was a couple of inches too long for the bed. That was the night I started looking at the xTool S1.

My name is Gus Pellegrino. I taught shop at the high school here in Tucson for 31 years, and when I retired I figured I would keep my hands busy in the garage. I engrave hardwood cutting boards, leather patches, slate coasters and powder-coated tumblers for weekend craft fairs and the Etsy shop my wife Linda runs. I do not claim to be the fastest or the fanciest maker out there. I am just a guy who spent four years learning what a laser will and will not do, and the S1 is the first machine I have owned that does not make me work around its limits.

The mistake I keep coming back to is that I bought my first laser as a toy and then expected it to do a job. It could not hold a full-size cutting board without me flipping it and lining up the second pass by eye. It had no enclosure, so every job filled the garage with smoke and I ran a window fan that barely kept up. And when a job ran long, I stood there babysitting it instead of doing anything else. I tell people the S1 did not make me a better engraver. It made me a calmer one, because I stopped fighting the machine.

The xTool S1 is a 40W enclosed diode laser with a 23.93 by 15.16 inch bed, a listing sold as a rotary bundle (check what it includes), and a lid that closes over the whole job. For someone like me, the enclosure is not a luxury. It means the smoke goes through the exhaust instead of into my lungs, and it means I can start a job and walk into the house for a cup of coffee without worrying that one of the neighborhood cats will wander in and stare at a moving beam. That peace of mind alone changed how much I actually use the machine.

The first time I closed the lid on a 40-minute cutting board job and walked inside to pour coffee, I understood what I had been missing for four years.

The first real job I ran on the S1 was a batch of six cutting boards for a local restaurant. On my old machine, each board took three setups: one pass for the design, a manual flip, a second pass to finish the edge, and a lot of praying that the two halves lined up. With the S1, each board was a single setup. I loaded the board, closed the lid, hit start, and the machine did the rest while I rough-cut the next board's handle. The batch that used to take me a full weekend took me a Saturday morning, and every single board matched.

The rotary is the part I did not expect to use as much as I do. Tumblers are one of the best sellers at the craft fairs, and on my old setup I rolled them across a pair of paint cans with a rubber band. It worked about as well as it sounds. The S1's rotary holds the tumbler steady and spins it under the beam, so the engraving wraps around clean and the lettering does not squint off to one side. My wife Linda noticed the difference before I did, because suddenly every tumbler photo she posted on Etsy looked the same instead of half of them looking slightly crooked.

I will be honest about the tradeoffs, because that is the part of a review that actually helps somebody. The S1 is not a small machine, and it is not a cheap one. It takes up a real footprint on my workbench, and the exhaust hose means it needs to live near a window. The software has a learning curve if you have never used LightBurn-style design tools before, though the included software walked me through my first few jobs without me having to watch a single tutorial. And it is still a diode laser, which means it will cut thin wood and leather beautifully but it is not the machine to ask for deep acrylic cutting or metal engraving without a coating. Know what you are buying, and you will not be disappointed.

The other thing I tell people is that the S1 made my mistakes cheaper. On the old machine, a misaligned job meant a ruined board and a wasted evening. On the S1, the camera preview and the enclosed bed mean I can check the placement before I burn, and when I do make a mistake, it is one board, not three. For a guy who sells at craft fairs, where every ruined board is money out of pocket, that alone has paid for a good chunk of the machine.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

If you came over to my house and asked whether you should buy the xTool S1, I would not start with the specs. I would ask what you plan to make, and then I would tell you this: buy the machine that matches the job you actually have, not the job you hope to have someday, and not the job you are trying to get done cheap. My first laser was a lesson in false economy. It cost less, and then it cost me four years of standing over it, flipping boards by hand and breathing smoke. The xTool S1 cost more up front, and it has saved me more time in the first month than my old machine saved me in a year.

I would also tell you to start with one material and learn it well. For me it is hardwood cutting boards. Learn how the wood reacts at different speeds and power settings, keep a notebook, and do not take on a batch of 20 orders until you have made five good ones. The S1 makes that learning easier because you can see the job through the window, stop it mid-pass if something looks wrong, and adjust without burning a second board. A good machine does not replace practice. It just makes practice less punishing.