In this video, we're going to be running through the first-time setup for your xTool F2 Ultra so you can get cutting quickly. While this guide is a nice visual primer, always ensure you follow along with the instructions that came with your machine as well. Starting off, the box weighs about 30 kilos, so lift with two people and lift with your knees, not with your back. Even when it's been unpacked, this thing is still going to weigh over 20 kilos, so be mindful. In your box, you'll find some unboxing instructions, your instruction manual, your materials pack, your accessories box, and of course, your F2 Ultra. Now, you're going to be lifting it out with these straps here that are wrapped around the machine. I'm a bit of a big burly boy, but you are lifting a 21 kilo laser that has precisely aligned mirrors on the inside that if it's knocked, uh, might need some calibration, so two people here might be a bit of peace of mind. Undo those straps. Remove the plastic covering and slide the safety lid upwards. Inside the bottom phone block is your machine's touchscreen controller. Peel that sticker off the bottom. And then look up into the unit. In there, you'll see a big lens cap. Just pull the dangly cord to remove it. It just pops off nicely. It might be worth keeping these straps, foam blocks, and lens cap. If you ever need to move the machine to another shopper location, reinstalling them back in the reverse order that we just did will make the journey a bit safer for your F2. In your accessory box, you'll find the machine's power cable and brick, a USB cable, your slatted panel that you'll use to prop up some cuts on, cleaning cloth, a screwdriver, corner bracket, USB safety key, and air extraction tube.

Now, thankfully, this machine is pretty much assembled and all ready to go. And what we need to do is just plug things into it. So, start by going ahead and popping in the USB key into the rear of the machine, as well as the touchscreen controller. and then go ahead and plug in the F2 Ultra's power supply. Now, you are going to need some sort of air extraction or filtering system. You might have an existing filter or extraction system to blow it outside. So, go ahead and find the correct pipe adapters for that. We, however, are using the AP2 air filter. So, let's go ahead and set that up. The AP2 box is packed very, very similarly to the F2 Ultra. So, grab everything out, lift it by the straps, and then remove the straps plastic. It is worth noting that this thing is on some really roll-y caster wheels. So, we ended up 3D printing some blocks for ours to just, you know, stop it from moving around. But laser cutting some might be a good first practical project. Just worth knowing it rolls around a lot and very easily. I imagine if it's on the floor, this isn't an issue, but we've got ours on the shelf. So, next, we need to pull out the bottom five filters and remove the plastic covering on each of them. Super straightforward. Just put them back in the same correct order, and they're numbered going from top to bottom. Whack on the magnetic front panel and then go ahead and open up your accessories box to find the tubing adapters and even more tubing. And then just thread it through until you've got a few of these uh like rings clumped up at the end. Then just go ahead and connect the outlet port of the F2 Ultra to the top inlet port of the AP2. That extra tube you've got floating around, you can put it on the bottom of the AP2, which is the air outlet to guide the air somewhere else if you don't want it in your room. We found the filter to be good enough to directly circulate air back into the room for most things, but you may find that there's a certain material that can get a little bit smelly inside. So, having the option to, you know, blow the air and vent it outside is nice. Next, go ahead and plug in your AP2 and turn it on.

And let's also turn on the F2 Ultra. On the side, you will find two buttons. The big red one is an emergency stop. Twist it to pop it up and turn it on, and then smack it back down to turn the machine off. The big silver button is your main power button to turn on your machine. If you want to turn the machine off, use this button. Do not use the big red emergency button. It's only for emergencies when you need to immediately stop the machine. Using the estop as a regular power button consistently can damage parts of your machine and, you know, reduce the lifespan of your F2 Ultra. Use the regular power button unless of course it's an emergency.

Regardless, power on your F2 Ultra and plug a computer into it with the included USB-C cable. Now, to use your F2, you will need a piece of software called XTOL Studio. This is the software that we'll be using to finish setting up the machine, but you'll also use it to send design files to your machine. In xTool Studio, go ahead and create a new project and connect to a device. You should see your F2 Ultra pop up here. Connect to it and your machine will likely run you through a first-time setup. Thankfully, it walks you through everything you need to know and do. Just follow along with what it tells you to do. But the process will likely involve updating the machine's firmware, running through some basic laser safety, and running the laser calibration process. Again, it'll guide you through all of this, but for the calibration process, it'll ask you to get out a black piece of laser card from the accessories pack, tape it to the middle of the bed. It'll then engrave some crosshairs on it, and then it will just ask you to line them up in the software side of X tool things to, you know, calibrate your laser in your camera. Super easy. After that, it'll run through a beginner tutorial where you engrave something onto an aluminium business card, which also came with your accessories pack. This also runs you through how to use X tool Studio. You get to type in some custom text. I just put in what I had for lunch, just flex, and I had a bar mold. Definitely worth following along with this tutorial if it's your first time in xTool Studio. And it only takes like 15 seconds to engrave. Just a quick thing though, you will need to manually turn on your AP2 before running the, you know, engraving, but just for the first demo before we connect it.

Once it's done, you can go to your machine settings and connect it to your local Wi-Fi network. This is pretty handy as any computer running xTool Studio on your home network will be able to connect to it and send jobs to the machine. Another thing we can do here is connect the AP2 to your F2 Ultra wirelessly. Turn your AP2 off and then press and hold the power button for 5 seconds until the blue flashing pairing light turns on. Then go ahead and add a new accessory in xTool Studio and select the AP2. This is most definitely worth doing as you can set the AP2 up in auto mode, where it'll automatically turn on and off when you use your F2, and you can also monitor how much life is left in your filters. As you can see, we've already got quite a few hours on our AP2. There is also a little wireless receiver that came with the AP2. This is not needed here. That's for machines like the F1 or S1 that do not have an internal Bluetooth, you know, capability. You do not need to use it on this machine. It's for other things.

And with that, your F2 Ultra is set up and ready to go. If you're looking for something to do next, I would recommend finding some beginner-friendly tutorials or projects that use the included materials in the material pack. Dialing in the correct settings for a material is a little bit of a hurdle when starting out. And the X Tool provided materials have profiles in X Tool Studio with the correct settings all ready to go. So worth giving [music] that, you know, a run-through as your first thing. Regardless, we hope this video got you going with your F2 Ultra. If you need a hand with anything from this video or you just made something cool and you want to share it, head on over to our maker forums and post about. We're all makers over there and happy to help. Until next time though, happy making.