xTool P3 Overview | A New Standard for Making?

In this guide, we will be taking a hands-on look at the xTool P3, an 80-watt CO2 laser cutter that aims to bring industrial capability to a desktop format and price tag. We are going to be exploring its features, and seeing how this desktop machine stacks up against the industrial workhorses we are used to using here at Core. 

Let's get into it!

We need to address an elephant in the room. We have an industrial laser cutter in our production department. So why would we be looking at a desktop machine like the xTool P3?

We have a trusty industrial laser cutter, and we absolutely love it. It is an industrial workhorse that has churned out thousands of jigs, prototypes, and mounting plates for us over the last decade. It runs on a Metal RF Laser Tube, which is air-cooled, allows for incredibly fast pulsing (great for detailed engraving), and generally lasts a very long time. But like most industrial equipment, it comes with industrial maintenance costs.

Right now, our industrial laser cutter is due for a new laser tube. Because it is a specialised metal RF tube, the replacement part and the certified labour to install it is going to set us back about $12,500 AUD. By comparison, the xTool P3 uses a Glass CO2 Laser Tube. These are water-cooled and treated more like a consumable—they won't last as long as an RF tube, but they are significantly cheaper to replace (usually in the 100's of dollars, not 10's of thousands). In fact, for the cost of repairing the tube from this manufacturer, we could buy an entire Xtool P3 unit without any accessories.

xTool has been a bit of a disruptor in the laser cutting space recently. They started under the banner of Makeblock (known for their STEM education robots) and initially made cheap and cheerful Diode lasers like the D1. Those diode lasers are great for hobbyists, but they operate on a different wavelength of light (blue light) that struggles with clear acrylic and lacks the raw punching power of a CO2 laser system.

With the P3, their latest flagship desktop cutter, xTool has taken the leap into proper high-power CO2 laser technology, aiming to shrink that industrial capability down to a desktop size. So, we wouldn't be doing our jobs if we didn't pick one up to answer the big question: Exactly how much machine can you get for the price of a single replacement RF tube?

The P3 is an 80-watt CO2 laser cutter, which puts it in a very interesting spot in the market. To really understand what this machine can do, we need to talk about the "heart" of the laser—the tube itself. 

At this price point, you essentially have two choices: an 80W Glass Tube (like the P3) or a machine with a Metal RF Tube, which typically tops out around 30W or 40W for the same money.

So, what's the difference?

• RF Tubes (30-40W) are incredibly precise. They have a tiny laser "dot" size and can pulse on and off tens of thousands of times per second. This makes them the kings of high-speed, high-detail engraving. However, they lack the raw "grunt" needed for deep cutting.
• Glass Tubes (80W) are like a sledgehammer by comparison. They have a slightly larger dot size, but they generate massive amounts of raw heat and can "punch" through a lot of thicker materials.

If you are cutting 3mm acrylic, both an 80W glass tube and a 30-40W RF tube will handle it just fine. But once you step up to 6mm, 10mm, or thicker materials, the 30-40W RF tubes start to struggle, often requiring multiple passes or leaving charred edges as they don't have enough energy to punch through the material. The 80W glass tube in the P3, will just power through it.

In fact, xTool claims the P3 can cut 20mm basswood and 25mm acrylic in a single pass. Now, we haven't pushed it quite that far ourselves yet, but we've seen plenty of people in the community put this to the test. While it is definitely on the very edge of what the machine can physically do, it is possible—something a 40W RF tube could only dream of.

The P3 boasts a max speed of 1200mm/s, which is decently quick for a desktop machine. However, it's important to temper expectations if you are coming from an industrial background. Machines like our existing industrial laser cutter use high-end Servo Motors to drive the gantry. These are expensive, but they offer incredible torque and acceleration—meaning they hit top speed almost instantly. The P3 uses Stepper Motors (similar to what you'd find in a 3D printer). While they can reach high top speeds, they don't have the same raw acceleration as industrial servos. It's fast, but it doesn't quite have that "snap" of a $50,000 machine.

The P3 features a very generous 916mm by 457mm work area. For most projects (jigs, signs, cases), this is plenty of room. However, the P3 has a party trick: the Conveyor System. This allows the machine to feed material through itself, technically giving you an infinite work length (as long as it is less than 600mm wide). This means you could take a 3-meter-long plank of wood, feed it through the machine, and cut unique shapes or engrave a continuous pattern along the entire length.

A Note on Safety: Out of the box, theer Dev P3 is a Class 1 Lasice. This means it's fully enclosed, and if you open the lid, the laser stops immediately—it's as safe to use as a microwave. However, if you use the conveyor feeder, you have to open the slots on the side of the machine to let the wood pass through. This converts the machine into a Class 4 Laser Device. The laser can escape the enclosure through these gaps, so you (and anyone else in the room) must wear laser safety glasses, and you generally need to be more vigilant with safety protocols.

Something worth mentioning here, the P3 is also packed with safety sensors, including 8 internal flame sensors and a temperature sensor. It also features a built-in Fire Safety System. You have to purchase the small CO2 gas canisters separately (they look like mini soda-stream bottles), but once installed, the machine can automatically detect a flare-up and extinguish it before it becomes a problem. You obviously still have to watch the laser cutter at all times - never leave a running machine unattended - but knowing it has that active suppression system is quite a comfort, especially in a shared makerspace or school environment.

Now, it is worth noting that the conveyor system we just mentioned is an accessory. You can buy the machine as a standalone unit, but we opted to splurge a bit more and get a few more accessories. This costs a bit more upfront, but it unlocks the full potential of the machine right out of the gate.

In this, we also got the is the RA3 Rotary Accessory, which rotates a round object so it can be engraved. If you have ever tried to engrave a tumbler or a glass on an older laser cutter, you know it can be a bit of a dark art involving maths and manual alignment. The P3 makes this a breeze with xTool Studio - the P3's cutting software. 

One of the few downsides of a CO2 laser (like the P3) is that it cannot mark bare metal. The wavelength of the light just bounces right off the surface. Usually, if you wanted to engrave metal, you would need a completely separate Fiber or Infrared laser machine. However, xTool has released a swap-in 1064nm Infrared (IR) Laser Module. Note: This is sold separately and is not included in the bundle. This module clips onto the gantry and allows you to engrave on gold, silver, copper, and platinum.

One more thing worth mentioning - and this is probably the biggest feature of the P3 - is that it has a great system of LiDAR and cameras. However, this is so integrated into the xTool Studio software that it deserves its own section alongside it.

To explain why I love xTool Studio and its integration, let's look at 3D printing. Back in 2016, I bought a Prusa Mk2 (about the same time we got our big red industiral laser cutter). It was a killer machine and an absolute workhorse, but it came from an era where you had to really understand your machine to get good results. You were often babying it, tweaking first layers, and manually dialling settings. Then in 2023, I upgraded to a Bambu Lab P1S, and I was amazed that I could just hit "print" and walk away. The automated systems handled the fiddly bits, and I was amazed that one didn't have to know the machine inside out to get a perfect part - it just works.

The P3 feels like that same jump for laser cutting. It shifts the workflow from "having to know the machine and the process" to "it just makes the part." And this is thanks to a few things.

The moment you open the lid, the wide-angle camera embedded in it snaps a picture of the entire bed, when the light goes green, close the lid and that photo appears in xTool Studio as your canvas. This isn't just a gimmick; it really changes how you align jobs. Instead of dealing with coordinates or moving the laser head around to line up your cuts, you just drag your design onto the image of your material.

If you need more precision than the wide-angle camera can provide (it has a bit of fisheye distortion at the edges), you can use the close-up camera located on the laser head itself. We tested this by placing a small, oddly shaped offcut on the bed. Using the close-up camera, we could see the material texture in great detail. We were able to line up a cut right to the very edge of the scrap, allowing us to use every square millimetre of material. The software can even stitch multiple close-up shots together, giving you a high-resolution map of larger areas if you need that level of accuracy across a bigger piece.

When you close the lid, the machine doesn't just look, it measures. The built-in LiDAR system scans the material surface to set the focus automatically. We found this to be incredibly reliable—no more dangling manual focus tools or guessing heights. But the LiDAR goes a step further. It can scan 3D surfaces. If you have a curved object (like a computer mouse or a gentle slope), the P3 can map that curve and adjust the laser focus in real-time as it moves across the object. This lets you engrave on non-flat surfaces that would be impossible on a standard machine.

One of the coolest things that we think really exemplify the xTool Studio experience is the materials library. The studio comes with a built-in library of materials with pre-set cutting parameters. That's standard stuff (although it is fairly comprehensive). However, the really impressive stuff is in the power/speed matrices they have generated.

When using a new material, it is often a smart idea to generate a power/speed matrix - a series of cutting tests to determine which combination of the two give you a good clean cut or engrave. Xtool has already done this for every material in the materials library and when you select the material, it selects the best settings. HOWEVER, you are able the result of this test matrix, AND each test is actually a button that can be selected to select that power/speed profile. This is just such a simple, user-friendly feature that blows us away and speaks for a lot of the ease of use we found in Xtool Studio.

It's also worth mentioning that xTool has integrated a platform called Atomm. If you are familiar with Bambu Lab's MakerWorld or Prusa's Printables, this is essentially the same concept but for laser cutting. It is a community repository packed with projects that are ready to go and is worth checking out.

Like most things in life, building a laser cutter is an optimisation problem, and we feel like xTool has solved that equation pretty well with the P3.

They had to make choices. Instead of an expensive, air-cooled metal RF laser tube, they used a water-cooled glass tube. Instead of high-end industrial servos for the gantry, they used stepper motors. Sure, it would be nice to have those industrial components, but an 80-watt RF tube and servo drive would triple the price of the machine instantly. Instead, xTool spent that budget on developing incredible software and a sensor ecosystem that just works. The result is a machine that strikes a nice balance: it is beginner-friendly enough for a novice, but powerful enough to do serious work.

So, are we throwing out our big red cutter? Probably not anytime soon. We want to be clear—this guide isn't here to talk smack about brands. We love our Speedy 400, and these two machines will likely be working side-by-side in our warehouse for a while.

But here is the takeaway. If I were in charge of fitting out a Makerspace for a university, or if I were starting a home business with a limited budget, the value proposition of the P3 is undeniable. The most powerful thing about this machine is how it flattens the learning curve. In a Makerspace environment, you often battle the fact that industrial machines require industrial knowledge to operate safely and effectively. The P3 brings laser cutting to a point where people with non-technical backgrounds can walk up, line up their design on the camera, and happily create something without knowing the machine or the process. That accessibility, combined with the fact that you can buy this whole setup for the price of a single industrial repair bill, makes it an extremely attractive offer.

If you have any questions about the P3 or our experiences with it (especially later on after we have had a good amount of time using it), feel free to drop a comment on the forum linked below.

Until next time, Happy making!