The Maker’s Toolbox: xTool F2 Ultra UV Laser Machine

The UV laser market is really heating up and xTool is throwing their hat into the ring with the release of the xTool F2 Ultra UV laser machine. I’ve been testing it for the past couple of months and I’m ready to give you my thoughts about the machine in this review.

UV? Like sunlight?

Yes. Every laser engraver and cutter out there generates focused light at a specific wavelength. The blue diode lasers that are so common at the budget end of the market operate at 450nm (blue light) or sometimes 405nm (bluish-violet light). Those photons are exactly the same as photons you see when light reflects off of something blue.

Lasers are available in all kinds of wavelengths, each with strengths and weaknesses. The properties of the material you’re cutting or engraving play a major role in that, which is why you want to match your laser to the material you plan to work with the most.

I wrote an overview of laser types that you can read here, if you’d like to get a general idea of what kind of laser you need.

UV lasers, including the xTool F2 Ultra UV, operate at 355nm. That wavelength is in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum and you can’t see it. It happens to work well with a wide range of materials. On top of that, UV lasers can be made to have very small dot sizes, which focuses the energy into a smaller area, increasing efficiency and improving fine detail.

And finally, UV lasers are sometimes called “cold lasers,” because that short wavelength packs a lot of photon energy that breaks chemical bonds. The result is cutting or engraving without burning or melting material. At least that’s what the internet tells me — the physics and chemistry are beyond me, so I’m just relaying the information. But it does match what I’ve seen. You can, for example, cut paper without burning the edges.

The basics

As the name tells you, the xTool F2 Ultra UV model is related to the xTool F2 Ultra. I reviewed the single-laser (60W MOPA) variant of that recently and I encourage you to read that. I’ll be glossing over some things in this review, as I already discussed them there.

The UV model is almost exactly the same size as the xTool F2 Ultra, being just a millimeter shorter and identical in size otherwise. It is a little heavier, but not much (less than 2kg heavier than the single-laser). It also has the same maximum processing height: 150mm.

However, the working area is a little bit smaller at 200×200mm, compared to 220×220mm. It is worth noting that the xTool F2 Ultra has two lenses: one for “inner engraving” (3D in crystal) and one for regular surface engraving. That 200×200mm spec is just for the latter. If you’re doing inner engraving, that drops to 70×70mm.

And finally, the laser module itself has 5 watts of power. That might not sound like much compared to the 60 watts of the F2 Ultra’s MOPA laser, but it is surprisingly effective thanks to the unique characteristics of the UV wavelength.

Accessories

The xTool F2 Ultra UV is compatible with the accessories made for the xTool F2 Ultra. Those include the awesome Auto Streamline Conveyor (see my review of the xTool F2 Ultra), the RA3 rotary module, the AP2 air purifier, the IF2 inline fan, the pedal/button for batch processing, and the fire safety system.

In addition to those, the xTool F2 Ultra UV comes with the fantastic wired control panel (I love that thing), both lenses (surface engraving and inner engraving), a special material stand for inner engraving, and a variety of fixturing hardware.

That fixturing hardware is nice and most of it makes use of thumbscrews to mount to the handy grid of threaded holes on the bed.

There is an internal camera for positioning, which is great. But the fixturing system is ideal if you’re doing batch processing to engrave the same thing over and over again. Just screw a fixture in place and position your design. Then every subsequent job can use the same position.

Software

The only officially supported software you can use with the xTool F2 Ultra UV is xTool Studio, which is available for Windows and macOS.

I’m not a big fan of closed ecosystems and the lack of compatibility with third-party software may be a dealbreaker for some of you. However, I recognize that it is somewhat necessary. This is not a generic machine and it has a lot of specialized functions that simply wouldn’t work in, say, LightBurn — at least not without a lot of customization. Inner engraving, for example, would not be easy to implement.

Of course, xTool also has financial incentives to keep everything locked down and users within the xTool ecosystem.

Thankfully, xTool Studio is pretty good. In m

ost cases, it works very well. It is user-friendly, has almost all of the functionality you could want, and has been stable in all of my testing.

I only have a couple of complaints about it.

First, it encourages you to use AI features to generate designs and those require credits that you’ll need to pay for. The frustrating part is that it isn’t always clear what will and what won’t use AI. Some functions that you may not expect will require AI.

Second, the material library is far from comprehensive. A lot of materials simply don’t exist in the library. And many, many of the materials that are in the library lack settings for the F2 Ultra UV. Sometimes they’ll only have Score settings, but not engraving or cutting. Sometimes they won’t have any settings.

That even includes official materials sold by xTool themselves, which are definitely compatible with the UV laser. So, it feels a little bit like laziness that they’re missing settings. xTool could have put a couple of engineers in a lab for a week to provide comprehensive settings that at least act as starting points, but it chose not to.

Third, positioning with the camera can be a little annoying, because there isn’t any way to adjust the opacity of a design. I wanted to do that when making a PCB, so I could position the traces directly over pre-drilled holes. But there isn’t an option to temporarily lower opacity while positioning, which seems like an obvious feature to include.

Testing process

As usual, my testing process consisted of engraving and cutting a wide range of designs in a wide range of materials. My goal is to give you an opinion, rather than a series of data points from controlled lab testing, because that is really boring.

Thankfully, xTool provided me with quite a few materials to try and I had plenty on hand, too. With those, I was able to develop a pretty clear picture of the F2 Ultra UV’s capabilities and the areas where it is weak.

I’ll go through a bunch of the materials I tested and give you my thoughts on each.

Copper-clad PCB blanks

I was excited to try using the xTool F2 Ultra UV to make my own PCBs at home, as I had heard that UV lasers might be ideal for the job.

Sadly, that didn’t seem to be true. I tried more than a dozen PCBs and never achieved good results.

Part of the problem is that xTool Studio doesn’t have a convenient process for working with PCBs. The material library doesn’t include PCBs, and getting a design from KiCAD into xTool Studio required several intermediary image processing steps.

But the real issue is in how the UV laser removes copper. It can engrave and cut through thin copper very well. However, it doesn’t really “burn away” that copper. I found that independent traces would have measurable resistance between them and I think the reason is that some copper particles were being baked into the FR-4.

The only way I could avoid that entirely was to engrave very, very deep valleys between traces. The only successful PCB I was able to make (with properly isolated traces) required engraving about halfway through the FR-4 and that took around 90 minutes.

There may be a better way to do this. But xTool doesn’t provide a method and I couldn’t find one before I ran out of blanks.

EVA foam

Works great! It only took me two tries to find good settings for this thick EVA foam (at least I think it is EVA foam).

It cut through cleanly, without burning or melting the edges. And it is quick. This small lightning bolt only took about 20 seconds to cut out.

Wood

No problem here, either. It engraves wood well and can cut through it, too. It isn’t quite as fast as something like a 60W blue diode laser, but it engraves wood without burning.

Another advantage is that the UV laser dot is tiny, so you can resolve very fine details. That’s cool, because usually laser-engraved photos lack “resolution” and look a bit fuzzy. That isn’t the case here.

If I was only cutting wood, I would still choose a different type of laser (either CO2 or blue diode). But for engraving photos, this is about as good as it gets.

Ceramic

Ceramic engraves very well, but you may not be able to see it. As an example, take a look at this engraving I did on a white ceramic plate:

You can only see that because I positioned the light very carefully when taking the photo, so you see the glare difference from the sheen. At other angles, the engraving is almost invisible.

Whether or not that is acceptable will depend on what you’re engraving. If the underlying ceramic is white and the glaze on top is a contrasting color, it should look great. If they’re the same color (especially white) as they are in the example, the engraving will be hard to see.

Metal

The xTool F2 Ultra UV engraves metal very well, especially considering it is only 5W.

And I’m talking about bare metal, not metal coated in paint, powder, or some kind of marking spray. A lot of laser manufacturers say their models can engrave metal, when they really mean they can engrave the coating.

The F2 Ultra UV easily and quickly engraved the metals I tried: aluminum, mild steel, and brass. My understanding is that it should be able to engrave precious metals, like gold and silver, too. In fact, it should be able to engrave any metal.

That is surprisingly fast, too. Depending on what you’re doing, it may even be faster than the 60W MOPA. That’s because the UV laser produces great contrast, even at shallow engraving depths, so you don’t need to be aggressive.

Faux leather

You have to be careful when using a laser with real leather, as the tanning chemicals can be dangerous. Safe leather is hard to find and I avoid it altogether. But faux leather made for use with lasers is common.

This patch, for example, engraved extremely easily. It has a cool silvery sheen on the engraved area, which creates tons of contrast and looks neat. You can find other types if that isn’t your taste.

If you do want to work with real leather, the UV laser should engrave it without any issues. But be very careful to purchase laser-safe leather.

White acrylic

Lasers are finicky when it comes to acrylic. Many lasers can engrave acrylic in dark colors (especially black), but fail with transparent or light colors. CO2 lasers are the only type that can easily cut all acrylic colors.

But the F2 Ultra UV may be worth considering if you only need to engrave. Even in white acrylic, it engraved with a high-contrast mark very well (right in the photo). It didn’t do a good job cutting that acrylic (left in the photo). I could have gotten through it with enough passes, but it would have been messy.

The engraving/marking was fantastic, though.

Other plastic

This is a tough one to evaluate, because there are just so many different types of plastic. However, my understanding is that UV lasers work well on most of them.

For instance, this polypropylene plastic cup that I did with the rotary attachment turned out great.

A big benefit here is that “cold laser” factor that I described at the beginning of this review. Because the UV laser isn’t transferring much heat to the plastic, it can engrave/mark without melting the material.

Slate

Slate coasters are really popular, because they engrave well and look nice. Most laser types can handle slate without too much trouble and the UV laser isn’t an exception.

It engraves slate with ease, leaving marks with pretty decent contrast. I will, however, say that the small dot size is a bit detrimental here. The marks are too fine, so you’ll want to double or even triple your lines to make them more visible.

Glass

UV lasers are well-suited to engraving glass without any kind of coating or spray. That said, “glass” is a very broad term. Like “plastic,” it refers to many distinct materials, each with its own composition and chemical properties.

I’ve found that it is difficult to determine the exact type of glass you’re purchasing. Even when the product description lists a specific type (which is actually pretty rare), it can often be wrong. Some work much better with the xTool F2 Ultra UV than others.

The only two that I can confirm as working with confidence are K9 crystal and soda-lime glass.

K9 crystal is rare, but soda-lime glass is extremely common and covers most everyday glass objects. But there are also different types of soda-lime glass. I tested a bunch of different samples, including those provided by xTool and a selection from my local thrift store.

Unfortunately, I got very mixed results. Sometimes the engraving worked well and sometimes I couldn’t even get a mark. I believe that success comes down to focus, as the UV laser has to be perfectly in focus to engrave on soda-lime glass. Otherwise, the light will just pass through.

The difficulty comes in achieving that perfect focus. It isn’t too hard when the glass object is flat. But it is pretty difficult when doing rotary engraving. If the rotary module’s tilt angle is even slightly off, some of the engraving will completely fail. You can see that with this “drink water” engraving, which was good in some areas and entirely missing in others.

All of that to say that you can engrave soda-lime glass, but it might take extensive tweaking to get reliable results.

K9 crystal 3D “inner engraving”

And now we can finally get to the xTool F2 Ultra UV’s big party trick: 3D engraving inside of K9 crystal blocks.

This is really cool and is a capability that is unique to UV lasers. I made an entire video about how this works:

If you don’t want to watch that, the basic gist is that UV lasers are only strong at the point where they are most in focus and that is a very short range. If you focus the laser at a point inside the K9 crystal block, the laser will make a microfracture at the focal point. Make tons of those microfractures and you get something like a point cloud forming your 3D model.

This might work with other types of glass or crystal, but xTool recommends K9 crystal and that is the only material I’ve had success with.

To do this inner engraving, you must use the provided lens and riser stand. Then you enter the dimensions of your K9 crystal block, load up your 3D model, set parameters (stick to the recommended settings to start), and start engraving.

This galaxy example only took a few minutes to complete. But large models at high “resolution” (really point density) can take much longer, so keep that in mind.

For the best results, put the finished K9 crystal block on an LED stand.

Final thoughts

The xTool F2 Ultra UV is a really interesting model. It has most of the benefits of the xTool F2 Ultra single and dual-laser models — including the great accessories — but with the unique capabilities of the UV laser.

That UV laser can’t compete with the metal engraving and cutting power of the 60W MOPA laser. It also can’t compete with the wood-cutting power of the 40W blue diode laser. But it excels at versatility and fine detail. With the UV laser, you should be able to mark or engrave just about any material, which is a big selling point. And you can do that without melting or burning the material.

The 3D inner engraving in glass (really K9 crystal) is neat, but I’m not sure many potential buyers have a use for that capability. Unless you plan to sell novelty gifts, there isn’t much practical use for inner engraving that I can think of. But maybe you have some kind of optical glass instrument manufacturing in mind.

It would be irresponsible not to consider the price, which is currently $4,499 for the F2 Ultra UV Standalone SKU that doesn’t include any accessories. Compare that to the $4,899 price of the F2 Ultra (Single) Standalone model that has the 60W MOPA.

$4,499 isn’t cheap, of course, but UV laser machines have just started hitting the prosumer market and they’re all expensive right now. The ComMarker Omni X that I previously reviewed is now discounted to $3,799 and even at that price, I think the xTool F2 Ultra UV is by far the better option. It is a more polished machine and the software is dramatically better.

I’ll close out this review by saying that if you want a UV laser, the xTool F2 Ultra UV is the one to get right now. But before making that decision, you should carefully consider what capabilities you require and if a UV laser is right for the job.