Re: X-Carve as a budget CNC?
 

Hate resurrect a dead topic, but I thought this would be a relevant update...

My team purchased an X-Carve an during their Black Friday sale, and finished assembly and initial testing in late December. We've recently been looking into putting it to use for manufacturing polycarbonate components on our robot (of which there are many). One of the kids on the team had a GoPro, so we set it up to take a timelapse of a run of a pair of test pieces we designed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiaydzvYsrM

This was the 3rd attempt on this particular piece (you can see there are some other holes and markings on the sheet from earlier failed tests), which appears to, for the most part, have been a success. We found out the hard way on the earlier runs that it would appear when adjusting the stepper motor voltage with the potentiometers on the controller, that you can, apparently, turn the settings up too high and actually reduce the power of the motors, leading to unwanted results. The only issue we had on this run was that the larger pocketed holes were a little small (and inconsistently so around the radius of the hole, varying between 0.03 to 0.01 too small), but everything appeared to have been centered in the correct positions.

The test part was designed to simulate a portion of our drive system this year, to see if the X-Carve would be accurate enough to work with the tolerances required to build it. It could be better, but we're looking into the possibility of making the initial cuts using the X-Carve and then doing a finishing cut of the pockets on our 2.5 axis CNC, potentially saving several days worth of work in the process.

Re: X-Carve as a budget CNC?
 

Nice video. We are using an X-Carve at our makerspace, that one of our members built. (We're cutting 300 catapult kits for a school). He 3-D printed a collar for around the bit that a vacuum hose can attach to. This way it vacuums as it cuts. I'll be at the space tonight, and snag a photo for you.

Brian

Re: X-Carve as a budget CNC?
 

Look into calibrating the x y and z axis on the inventables forum. The ring around the spindle is probably bad. It's containing the cuttings. Re-cuting material in the tool path is bad especially if you try AL.

Re: X-Carve as a budget CNC?
 

I found a picture on our Facebook page. The bottom of the collar has brush bristles, so the length bristles determines you're max Z distance. The collar is attached via magnets, so it's easily removed when not needed. He suspends the vacuum hose with a string to keep it out of the way.

Brian

Re: X-Carve as a budget CNC?
 

Same here, 4918 just got ours running, so far it works like a dream for cutting wood. Prototyping has been so much easier. We plan to eventually use a Universal Gcode Sender with some rigidity mods to cut aluminium.

Re: X-Carve as a budget CNC?
 

I saw a lot of dust collectors like that but I didn't care much for them because I was concerned the bristles could get caught or cause additional resistance making the motors loose track of where they were (plus they all required additional assembly steps and/or materials).

The collector I came up with is a bit more passive, but still works fairly well at keeping material out of the tracks.

The ring was my attempt at a dust collector, it did work fairly well but got a bit clogged on occasion. I'm looking into expanding the holes to help alleviate this issue. I'm pretty sure we followed the calibration instructions correctly, and every instruction I've seen for adjusting the power of the Y axis has consisted of "Turn the dial clockwise".

Re: X-Carve as a budget CNC?
 

The X carve with a high quality spindle or high quality router, is a fine machine for FRC. I have one that has been lightly modified and have made a lot of parts for FRC bots and other projects. It is not super accurate, but holds dimensions withing +/- 0.005" with no problems in aluminum.

I have made lots of parts with mine for clients. it is not perfect but is a great value.