I received my Carvey not but 3 weeks ago. I had issues connecting Easel to it so I wrote a quick serial sender to get the machine up and running. I realized you have complete control over the machine via it’s serial interface (this is my first CNC machine). I assumed I could do some things but not as much as it gave. So I extended the program a bit to include Loading, visualizing, and milling gcode files. It also has real time machine position and state visualization, jog controls, and a few keyboard shortcuts to emergency stop and what not.
Here are a few short videos showing it in action:
I quickly modeled the 1/16" Solid Carbide Upcut Fish Tail Spiral bit in Inventor and exported it as an .stl. This is displayed at the exact point the machine says it’s located.
I have much more to go but I thought I would share.
That sounds very cool Jason. One thing your program may already or could support, is using the Carvey to make accurate 2.5D measurements, either as XYZ points from the origin, or relative to other points already located. Will you make the program available for others to use?
I have a little way to go before I make anything available for others. At this point, you could do some harm to your device if you aren’t paying attention.
I’m already working on a probing system for both PCB’s and other stocks alike. I’m was originally writing this specifically for the Carvey but I abstracted it all out to allow other machine types. My father is a machinist for Nestle R&D and has been programming CNC’s all his life. He gave me many pointers on what industrial devices can do.
I’ve written all this code via UWA (Universal Windows Platform) and I plan to make this a ‘Man In the Middle’ controller. I’m using a Pi3 for this and it will enable WiFi Carvey, full tactile interface, and full backwards functionality. I’ll have some video’s and photos of the the CarvedPi controller here this weekend.
If any of you have other suggestion, or would like to maybe do some alpha testing, I’m all ears.
