Hi all. Is anyone here in/around Chicago? If so, what are you using your X-Carve for? I handle Marketing for Inventables and am always looking for interesting stories to tell about our customers. Thanks!
Hey Michael! I’m in La Porte IN about 50 miles from Inventables. Just trying to finish up my X Carve. I’m going to use mine for everything! Inlays, carving cabinet doors, small boxes. Anything I think would look cool carved! I’m an extreme CNC noobie, but have woodworking for a lot of years. Not sure if I have anything interesting to tell, but I’m here.
Far, NW suburbs here. Just trying to cut costs on prototyping acrylic parts (normally laser-cut). Maybe low-volume production, too.
I’m in downers Grove. I’m using it to make some tooling for winding RFID antenna coils. Bet you haven’t seen that one before 
Wow, these are all really interesting. If you guys get a chance, can you post some photos of your projects?
The first, real thing I tried was a small, PCB enclosure. Just the bottom survived (the top came loose during cutting). 90° v-grooves for folding the sides up. The top will need to have both sides machined, one for the v-grooves, and the other for a legend and logo.
Jeremy, what are you winding those coils for? Now I’m really curious as to what your project is!
Oh, here is another Chicago project (south loop). Just working on upgrading an X-Carve to be able to work with aluminium. I am now starting to get some good results. I started with some simple turner’s cubes, but the goal is to create some geometric sculptures with aluminum, and maybe some kinetic sculptures with non circular gears.
They are antennas, so the shape, dimensions, and number of turns is important. The finished antenna goes into a product we manufacture used in motorcycle racing applications where the factory part that normally housed the antenna was removed for weight reduction or crash survivability reasons. I can’t really discuss in more detail than that, but the xcarve is great because we can quickly try many different size and shape antennas by making our own tooling in just a matter of minutes.