Morning 🙂

Let me try to anser these points as best I can.

1) We wern’t paid for the video at all, they provided a basic machine and anything else i used i actually paid for out of my pocket (Or Andreas as is more often the case lol). The reason for the little paid promotion message is actually down to YouTube being a blunt instrument. We switched it on basically out of an abundance of caution because it is a bit different from the normal content we would work on 🙂

2) The danger factor needs a little more thought. For example, a laser can definately catch fire and so must never be left unnatended (i say all of this in the video btw) but this is where time comes into play. A laser will finish a basic cutting task in say about 45 mins to 1 hour, then its done an FDM printer will have to run for maybe 20 to 30 hours to potentially spit out something similar. So while the immediate risk is lower, it does sit unnatended for a very long time so chances of a thermal overrun being noticed are less. So its not so straight forward to compare them IMHO.

3) As regards the non hobby aspect, again it depends, I’m looking at it specifically from the perspective of a person in the hobby. Ive already seen thousands of products made with these things so I have a basic idea of the materials used. I have experience of resins and 3d printers etc so I know that materials need to be picked carefully for safety reasons. And with lasers its all about selecting safe materials of which there are a few perfectly safe materials (Plywood, MDF, Acrylic) that will do 99% of anything we want to do. And then there is ease of creation. Modeling in 3D is hard, like really hard – I can do a few basic things in tinkercad but after that I havent got the skills to go much further. On the other had working in two dimensions is a lot easier and there are like a bazillion things you can cut quickly with a laser. I am revisiting saga for my crusades at the moment so have been running off some custom fatigue tokens and measuring sticks. Little bridges, walk ways for the ewok table im looking at etc. I’ve been actually really surprised with the amount of options it opens up – heck I even was able to quickly run out some feet risers for a couple of bits of furniture for andrea lol.

3) Cost – Always a tricky thing – so the K40’s (the ones with the glass Co2 tube that need water cooled etc) are around the £400 mark. They come with no ‘brand’ and no customer service or real backup they are pretty much all grey imports. The XTools can be found on promotion regularily for £400 – £500. And IMHO opinion are a far far better machine than the K40. You would buy one of these because you want to work on larger things, so if space is an issue then lasers are not the way to go for wargamers as you dont get the benefits.

You could buy all the extras, but as you see in the video I specifically didn’t, and instead started experimenting with what I had available to me – and airbrush compressor for the air assist and a vachume cleander for fume and smoke extraction, I bought the lowest cost mesh bed I could find and a silicone mat to protect the work surface. So yup if you want all the other official items, fill your boots, but as a wargamer I seemed to have access to stuff I could repurpose – and I showed that in the video 🙂

4) The edit and the music – ok thats on me, because what you watched was 100% created by me in Davinci Resolve – normally we just record and then it runs through the editing process just using all the standard stuff we do. I wanted to take the opportunity while everyone else was so flat out to try resolve for a more complicated project, and the music background was really just inspired by videos tht I have watched over the last couple of years – DIY and Gardening stuff mostly lol. So its just an experiment in editing and presentation really when I had the chance to ‘break the mould’ a bit 🙂

So there you have it 🙂 – happy to answer any questions anyone might have about the machine, and I hope to try a few more ideas out on it from a warganing perspective over the next while 🙂