today I'm going to show you how I made these. This test grid on leatherette, test grid on maple, test grid on pine, basically any kind of material you want to run a test grid on, this is how you do it. So let's get into it. This is going to work with any material you've got, any machine you've got, as long as it's an xTool and you're using XCS software, this will work for you.
And like I said, any material, I've done this with wood, I've done it with metal, I've done it with stone coasters, the slate, I'm getting ready to do it today with a leatherette. This is a new product for me I haven't used before. If I want to do this test grid, And see exactly what effect I get for different things.
So I'm making this because I see a lot of people in the Facebook group asking people, what speed and power did you use or power and speed or however you want to say that. And while that's going to get you in a ballpark, it may not get you the best results you could possibly get because different things affect these machines different ways.
[00:01:00] And even the I think the location that you live and height and elevation and humidity and all that stuff comes into play, I believe. I want you to have this for your own because I just did a project this morning where I was engraving a little piece of maple for a guy.
One of my friends. And he's got a maple footstool that he wanted engraved for his grandson. So I couldn't really make a test grid on his and I didn't want to risk it. But I've used maple a lot. Also love cherry for engraving is great if you're not using it yet. I just grabbed my piece and I don't have it with me to show right now, but I grabbed my test grid and I was able to see exactly what outcome I wanted and then I could just set those that power and speed and ran it and it worked fine You can see my machine showing a D1.
It's not what I have I have an xTool but my xTool is also an S1 40W again whatever machine you've got, this will work. I [00:02:00] just want to show you the process in XCS, and then I'll show the process in the S1. But I'm gonna go ahead and run it because I'm not connected to the machine. I'm actually in my office, so I don't, I don't even connect this computer to the machine.
I just use it for kind of drawing and stuff. But anyway, you're gonna have to have a shape. So first you choose a shape. If you've got any questions to, just ask. I'm happy to help however I can. I like this shape here because it's got the little point on it. I can see how crisp it gets. And it's got the round so it works well.
Now what you've got to do is choose whether you want to engrave or cut or maybe make a test grid of both. I definitely make engraving tests. And then I'll make, I can do, I do want to do a cut on this too. So I'm just going to copy that. I'm going to get a second one and I'm going to choose cut on that one. Notice I've got no power, no speed set. This is all going to be based on the S20, but it's, this will give you, whatever your settings are that [00:03:00] are available on your machine.
So, whatever you're using, it doesn't matter. I don't want to waste a whole bunch of material. You can see this is a little over an inch and a half wide. I'm just going to do, I like quarter inch if I can do it.
So now we've got the quarter inch one single object and we've got engraved selected. You've got to have this selected before you select your test grid. So now you come over to the, whatever this little thing, applications, and then material test array, choose that. You can choose whatever the maximum power is.
So 100 percent obviously is maximum, and then 10 percent is minimum. Think that's good for me with this test. I typically start around 50 or so with speed. And I'll probably go a little higher than that with this because I'm just engraving. But what this gives is this 5x5. Now if you want a bigger, you can see these settings are already preset. So I've got 50, 138, 225, [00:04:00] 313, and 400 for speed, and then 10 to 100 for power.
If you want more than that, You can come over here and select more columns and more rows. And you can see what that does now is it gives you more powers and more speeds based on your machine. And it'll even tell you what it is, tell you where the speed is, where the power is, like I said, what your machine is.
And that's the way you can do it. Now, Once you run this on your piece, then you've got the test piece forever. So I typically just cut that piece out and keep it. And then when I'm doing a new project, I just grab this test array and then choose what kind of engrave I want and what result I want from that.
and then choose that power and speed because 284 speed and 70 power is going to be whatever this one comes out. [00:05:00] So while they all look the same here, they were all engraved differently and it's really a cool process.
So here's the one I made out of maple. Let's see if I can move my screen here so I can make sure I'm sitting, you're seeing it.
