I know, stacking dimes takes years of practice, and admittedly, there's a lot of pride that goes into showing off those perfect dime-shaped beads you've just laid down on that custom gas tank you just made for your sweet custom Harley Panhead bobber (or Evo, whatever) on your $5,000 Miller TIG machine. Believe me, I've laid some pretty crusty beads in my day, I understand.

XLaserLab just put out a guaranteed-delivery Kickstarter for the extremely portable and beginner-friendly X1 Pro laser welder ... that also cuts, cleans, and removes rust ... And it runs off 120/240v!

Having personal experience with old-school torch welding, MIG, and caveman stick welding, the X1 Pro comes off a little insulting, to be honest. It's designed to be so incredibly easy that a beginner can just pick it up and start laying down perfect dimes, even on super thin material down to 8 thousandths of an inch (0.2 mm) without melting through your project – or even deforming it. It doesn't require shielding gas and it can lay beads four times faster than a traditional welder. That's not to say that it's beneath a pro either. The guys that weld for a living are making good use of the X1 Pro as well.

It's like a welding GameShark cheat code.

While you're not going to be able to weld any half-inch armor plating to your 'dozer, the X1 Pro will reliably handle steel to just under an eighth (0.118 in / 3 mm). That means the X1 Pro will work perfectly on all the 18-20 gauge sheet metal on your classic cars in the garage that you've been meaning to restore for the last decade. And since laser welding produces far less heat than your MIG, you're not going to have to worry about warping while you're patching out all those rust spots.

Really, you shouldn't even have to grind it either, as the X1 produces little to no slag at all. But if you like grinding and having to clean up welds, this probably isn't the right product for you.

There's also a smaller, more portable 26.5 lb (12 kg) version called the X1 that can handle welding everything from stainless and carbon steel to galvanized sheets to just over a sixteenth (0.0625 in / 2mm). It doesn't have the same cutting, cleaning, or CNC compatibility features found on its bigger brother, but if you're just looking to weld stuff together, it's got what it takes.

And did I mention you can even use it to weld underwater?