Last December, I bought a 500 X-Carve for the team to use. It's been a learning experience. The X-carve is a soft machine. It is marginally capable of cutting AL in it's stock configuration. There are a few things that can be done to improve the stiffness. First, the x axis must be stiffened. This is a must. I like putting a 4 mm AL bar between the 2 x axis maker slides and then bolting the sandwich together every 2". After this, there will still be torsional flex on the X. Regardless of what you see online, most of this slop is from the Z and X delrin wheels. You might try the Openbuilds dual v-wheels. They are beefier. I went with Metal v-wheels. Everyone will tell you that metal wheels will destroy the maker slide. I have over 100 hours on the machine and I'm still waiting for my maker slides to be destroyed. Chip shields are a must to protect the maker slide and V wheels from chips. For deeper cuts compressed air jet and or a strong vacuum is a must.
Software is the other factor that can greatly improve the X-carve performance. I've tried many. Peck drills, Helical drills and ramps are a must. Recently, I have been using Estlcam.
http://www.estlcam.com/
I like the simplicity of this package and the developer has been actively improving it. 59$ for a license. It is simple and intuitive, Our students can handle it. The best feature and you must try this is trochoidal milling. Trochodial milling is excellent for soft machines. Watch this video.
https://youtu.be/ORJ-Q3TFW5o
And this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4fn-tP1PuI
The X-carve will never match a 6000$ plus cnc router but, with the proper software and mods it can be an affordable addition to a First team.