X-Carve as a budget CNC?

[protoserge]

Originally Posted by gof

Care to expand on the limitations? Always good to see the pros and cons, especially from someone with experience (even second hand).

Size, rigidity, depth of cut, chip size, etc. You can't hog on a small, lightweight router, so you are limited to taking shallow cuts with low feed-per-tooth. I'm not advocating these solutions are poor, just understand the speed and accuracy limitations of these machines will be limited to the inherent design. What I saw looked pretty good. The dimensional tolerance was good enough for FRC and the machine was portable, which helps out his team's limited shop access.

You get a huge upgrade when you go to a heavy, solid machine that can make very fast rapids and cuts. You can run appropriate/aggressive feedrates and a larger depth of cut per pass resulting in greater material removal rates and faster cycle times.