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Just to close this out completely, I got my lead screw yesterday. I hadn’t even taken the old one off yet, but when I did I could EASILY see the run-out on the section the bearing sits in. I have no idea how they machined it, but if it was on a lathe then they chucked it off-center. It is at least a millimeter out! It was also VERY snug in the delrin block. The new screw and new block combo spin WAY more freely. Installed them and it’s working like a champ. Got my first cut ever done, too:
The bottle cap is a 3D printed one I had someone else draw and I had printed. The tether is HDPE that I cut with the X-Carve. I found out the hard way that you can’t cut HDPE with a laser because it melts, so that’s mostly what prompted me to get my X-Carve finished finally. I re-use Smartwater bottles for backpacking/hiking and don’t want to drop the cap (or worse, lose the cap). After way more hours than it was worth, problem solved.
Anyway, thanks to everyone for all the help getting this far. Will move to a more appropriate category for things now. Thanks again!
Whoa, this is a super cool use for X-Carve! Thanks for sharing the photo; it helps to see it in context. I reuse Smartwater bottles for traveling all the time!
Out of curiosity…how come you had to get a 3D printed bottle top? Why not use use the Smartwater bottle top?
And that works and is far cheaper, but it’s also heavier and larger. I really wanted something light and streamlined. It’s possible that some good glue and some donor plastic could have been used with an existing cap, but I have trust issues with adhesives. I’m guessing there are scientific types out there that could tell me exactly what type of plastic the cap is made from and exactly what glues can be used to attach it to some other plastic that would be as strong as a solid piece, but that’s not in my wheelhouse personally. So here we are.
The cap is an ISO standard, strangely, and so there are drawings out there already of caps and bottles to use to go by. Just had to get someone with better 3D CAD skills than me to add the nub on top. Finding someone to do projects like that is pretty cheap on Freelancer.com, too.
Like you i purchased one back in 2015. I got it working but lost interset. I purchased the upgrade and once again it sat there however this last week I pushed myself and installed the upgrade I just hope that getting the software and connecting it up to easel works or i’ll be like you asking for help. My issue is I can’t think of anything to do with it.
Good luck with any futrue projects
I can’t figure out for sure what most people are using these for. I think it’s simply artistic stuff related to sign making. I assumed by now we’d have more of an ecosystem of people sharing plans to cut “things” much like how there are a gazillion interesting things to 3D print on thingiverse. I know there are some things you can cut from there, but a lot less that I would have thought.
I’m also a tad surprised by the laser community in this regard. It seems to mostly be art rather than function. There’s a little more downloadable function (like Raspberry Pi cases you can piece together), but not a ton. On the router side, a LOT of what you can download is simply another chair or table and usually it actually needs a router bigger than the 1000x1000 X-Carve anyway.
So either there are just a lot people doing a lot of non-art things that they just don’t share online (possible) or it’s mostly art.
I’m making guitar parts with mine. I was making guitar parts before I got a cnc too. If you make stuff out of materials, then I can see a use for it. Maybe you have a hobby interest is something and can adapt it to that? You may want to learn how to do Cad and create your own stuff too. Holiday ornaments are things that would be easy to do.
I haven’t shared much of what I’ve used mine for, but it has been a mixed bag. Not as many signs/decorations as the majority of members here, but some. And other things as well.
(Scroll down… the thread contains four or five projects.)
Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply there was no use for these, I was just sort of surprised that it seems like about 90% of what I see them used for is just signs or similar “art” type projects. I was expecting by now a more rich community of things like furniture and other useful “hard goods” out of interlocking plywood and such. There’s definitely some of that, but most of that stuff seems to require a bigger router, too.
Looks like some of it is also silo’ed, though. For instance, I also have a Shaper Origin, that also embarrassingly, I’ve never used. I had a LOT of projects in my head I wanted to do when I supported that on Kickstarter, and then 18 months later when it finally showed up I had moved on. But I’ve recently started cruising their forum and there is quite a bit of neat stuff being posted over there (and by that I mean shared with the community). Only some of it is “Shaper-specific”, and most is fairly generic really. But you need to be a forum member to find it, too. So maybe there’s more of that kind of thing on Shopbot specific forums and the like? I don’t know.
