[ehochstein]

Originally Posted by cbale2000

Two questions:

1. Could you explain more about how you modified the belt system? Possibly include pictures?
2. In your opinion could an X-Carve be used to build "mission-critical" parts for FRC robots?
   I'm considering getting one of these to speed up fabrication of our drive system, but the drive modules are expensive to make (or rather, to have to make more than once if they get screwed up) and require somewhat high tolerances (but within what the X-Carve advertises to have).
   Currently we make these parts on an (older) large Bridgeport 2-axis CNC mill, but between the setup, pre-cutting, and programming it takes an operator about 3 hours a day for the better part of a week to complete.

1. Please see pictures at this link. Essentially I wrapped the belt around in a slightly different way so the teeth would be forced into each other.
2. Yes, with modifications done to increase accuracy. Out of the box, carving aluminum I had a part that came out looking like this. I think the improvements that Ryan posted above for the machine would fix the quality issues I'm seeing in this cut. The hole is about 1" in diameter, originally it was supposed to be larger but I ran into scaling issues with Easel.

*Edit* It looks like Iventables has updated their belting instructions to run the same way.