X-Carve as a budget CNC?

[cbale2000]

Originally Posted by ehochstein

I purchased a fully loaded X-Carve a few months ago and had a chance to play with it quite a bit. The assembly instructions are great - everything is really easy to put together. The only time I deviated from the assembly instructions is when installing the belting, I'm using a different method to keep the belt in place than they recommended. I find that the recommendation they gave causes a lot of slip in the belt, especially when 'carving'...

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.