I bought myself an X-Carve Pro ( X-Carve Pro ), the bigger 4x4 model. Admittedly sort of a large impulse purchase, but it's supposed to be a combination of reward, utility, and fun. Maybe an opportunity to design my own kids toys or furniture or something. Who knows, like I said, impulse. There might be better or cheaper units out there, but I'm aiming for out-of-the-box simple. I just wanted to dive right into making things, rather than becoming an expert in CNC machines.

That said, who's got ideas for fun small projects to get me started?

These chairs look fun:



Later, I want to build a giant Harry Potter banquet table, using a giant Corian or quartz countertop. Maybe carve out some modern looking legs for it with the machine too? Who knows, the sky's the limit and that's pretty exciting to me.

Looking forward to seeing what you do with it.

I'm considering a 3D printer (analysis paralysis & funding in holding me off right now), much smaller $ investment for sure. And would be a relatively cheaper way to prototype parts for the Lotus.

This would be fun!

Wuuuut. Damnit, now I want a laser cutter too.

Your going to have a steep learning curve if you’ve never set one up or run one. Take your time and set up correctly, tram the head and resurface a decent spoil board or anything you try will not be sitting level/plumb in relation to the router head resulting in frustrating results. They aren’t a plug and play machine….they take time and attention to detail especially during set up.
I’ve been running a CNC router for a couple years at this point and have learned some hard lessons…once it’s running smoothly they are a lot of fun and you can get very creative… good luck!! Enjoy the journey

quote:

Originally posted by cgode:
Your going to have a steep learning curve if you’ve never set one up or run one. Take your time and set up correctly, tram the head and resurface a decent spoil board or anything you try will not be sitting level/plumb in relation to the router head resulting in frustrating results. They aren’t a plug and play machine….they take time and attention to detail especially during set up.
I’ve been running a CNC router for a couple years at this point and have learned some hard lessons…once it’s running smoothly they are a lot of fun and you can get very creative… good luck!! Enjoy the journey

Yeah, from what I can see in the setup videos, it comes with a bunch of levels, squares, torque wrench, and a planing bit for leveling out the spoil board as your first project. It appears that much of fiddly bits come pre-assembled, bringing setup time down from 12+ hours for their desktop machines to 4+ hours for their "pro" setup. More like "prosumer" but I'm OK with that.

I have a Shapeoko 3, and wish I had more time to play with it...

Here's a couple things I've made on mine

Here's your first project. Have at it.

A supersonic trebuchet or an RC airplane.

quote:

Originally posted by bigdeal:
Here's your first project. Have at it.

[FLASH_VIDEO]<iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/w51KsS7slmk" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>[/FLASH_VIDEO]

That's pretty sweet. Weeding out all those tiny cuts looks tedious as all getout though.

Very impressive, love the contrast of the natural wood along with the finishing steps. CNC for wood or metal is very cool to watch it work.

We have a laser engraver that produces super fine detail but only 1/8" deep due to only 25 watts. I do like that I can engrave our beer glasses with our brewing logo, looks pretty cool when finished.

I like the chair in the OP, and most anything similar, Scandinavian, MCM, etc. Bookshelves, floating shelves, cabinets, lamps, side tables.

Things like that become trivial once you're setup and going.

Buy more clamps. Can't have too many, nearly... Long, short, pipe, squeeze, ratchet straps, all of them, they all come in handy in different ways when building things / furniture / furnishings.

If there's a nice, local, Maker's Space in your area it'll probably be chocked full of local nerds into these things, lots of knowledge to be gained sometimes.

My brother bought a hobby size CNC router and had electrical issues with its controller. He just got that back from Canada this week. The machine is a chinese product but gets great reviews. Now if he'll just apply himself and learn. Guitar bodies are a popular item off the routers. You might consider custom pistol display cases. Their is no limit to what you can make. I know one guy who dedicated one of two bays of his garage to a large router. He was making 2 different size dog dish holders so the dog can eat from a elevated dish. He routed little paw prints on them. He has a knife attachment and cuts vinyl which he makes into spare tire covers for Jeep and other rear door mounted tire SUVs.

Cat 40 holders Ray? Thats quite a nice machine compared to the giant Komos I've run.

quote:

Originally posted by David Lee:
Cat 40 holders Ray? Thats quite a nice machine compared to the giant Komos I've run.

hsk 63 er40

I'm jealous and happy for you at the same time, I've been trying to talk myself into one for a couple years. What pushed you to x carve vs one of the other machines?

quote:

Originally posted by 46and2:
I like the chair in the OP, and most anything similar, Scandinavian, MCM, etc.
<snip>

That chair in the OP looks damned uncomfortable to me. I like, and own, lots of Scandinavian furniture, purchased while I lived in the Twin Cities. Most of it from Denmark, some from Finland (*1). All of my pieces are elegantly simple, but comfortable.

(*1) Finland isn’t a Scandinavian country but the designs are Scandinavian in character.

As for cool project ideas – There was a recent thread about a functioning cardboard Glock…

quote:

Originally posted by mark60:
I'm jealous and happy for you at the same time, I've been trying to talk myself into one for a couple years. What pushed you to x carve vs one of the other machines?

Targeted marketing.

I can over-research with the best of them, but honestly this was such an impulse and the "green light" window was available from the Wife/CFO so I didn't want to eff around with figuring out how to do this better/cheaper. As far as I'm concerned, the going factors are that this thing advertises repeatability down to .001", can handle full sheets of plywood (4 ft wide by unlimited length), and comes bundled with software. Figured that was enough for my needs. Also, I get real English speaking US based support on the first ring the two times I called to ask questions.

I looked around briefly, and I saw a bunch of smaller desktop machines for a couple thousand, or professional shop machines for $15k all the way up to $50k, none of which looked all that inviting to new users.

Congrats Aeteocles. You're going to love it.

cgode has some good advice. Be careful and go slow. Know where that STOP BUTTON is at all times.
Prepare to be overwhelmed by the possibilities. That is a good thing.


We have a Axiom Pro V6. It is an incredible machine.


Here are a couple of lidded boxes we used for testing.



Here is our first test inlay. I couldn't find the pic of the final result but it turned out great.