this thing is really becoming an expensive paperweight! I try cutting stuff on here…takes freakin forever and winds up being garbage. I feel Ive not only wasted my money but Im wastng my time. Just to cut a simple sign, its an 10 plus hour project! Then half way thru it, the thing hits a knot or something and the carriage moves and the project that I just spent the last 4 hours on is complete junk. This is the 3rd time now! how any of you are using this in a business, is completely beyond me! I can’t even get it to work right hobby wise!..smh……guess Im paying $230 a month for a pos! Oh well, learn and deal I guess. Im done with it. God luck to everyone else.
1 Like
I feel your pain Tim, I don’t know about everyone else but i’ve had my fair share of belt slips and ruined projects. I did a lot of research on setting up the machine and learned that properly tensioning the belts and using sharp bits makes a huge difference. Almost as important as proper feeds and speeds. If you think there is a chance it will hit a knot, slow it down at that point to give it a better chance. I’ll attach a vid of a project I did on my stock x-carve without a roughing pass and it worked out good.X-Carve 3D Relief Carving - YouTube
2 Likes
Hey Tim, totally get the frustration. I had my fair share of failed cuts before learning the ins and outs of the machine. A 10 hour cut sounds really really long, do you mind sharing the Easel file your working with, would love to check it out and help dial your settings in!
Well, instead of jumping off the deep end on the first post why not calmly discuss one project, the things you have tried that have failed, and the things you have tried that have worked. Sharing the project so that people can see it as well as the settings will also help.
File>Share>Share with link
Copy the link and then hit the Save button.
Post the link here
You will find that there are quite a few people on this forum that will attempt to help get you started off in the right direction. Learning your machine and its capabilities is always a learning process…
{:0)
Brandon Parker
6 Likes
You have not failed. You have just learned several ways not to do things. Lets slow down and look at one project. By taking a look at the machine to make sure that it is setup correctly and look at the computer setup. There is a lot of great people that can help on this forum. You are not alone, many people have been where you are and have become very successful with their machine with just a little help.
5 Likes
…and not uncommonly its one or two issues that cause the grief. Its the troubleshooting that can be a little tedious.
2 Likes
what machine are you talking about. Where do you live and could you be interested in selling it.
1 Like
Sorry to laugh but I’ve been there, I know the feeling, and I’m sure everyone else here has felt like that. It is a learning curve. Frustrating at times but a learning curve indeed. I feel confident in what I have learned in these last five months, however I still fail. Some projects quick and easy. And others I have redone 4-5 times. Hell a Christmas order I am doing right now I’m on #3 (keep getting tear out) but I’ll get it done, sometimes you have to leave for a bit, come back and your mistake will be easier to spot. As far as the machine it’s my first, and have had problems with tool changes and moving gantry (I use a different method now) , broken belts (I learned how to properly tighten. Hasn’t happened again) spoilboard surfacing Will be something you run into as well. Good luck.
QUICK TIP you don’t need to carve too deep .02-.03 deep enough. You mess up surface and reuse, will save you money.
2 Likes
I didnt carve to deep…I was a CNC machinist for 20 years! Pretty sure I know what Im doing! …smh…The belt broke on the rightvsids and cimpletely ruined a project yhat I literally spent almost 10 hours at! This was the first real thing I cut on it, Ive been playing around with it since I got it getting it tyned in, then I go to do something and the belt breaks? Really? For what they charge, for the machine and the belts to replace, you would think they would last longer than a few hours! I finally got what I was doing cut…but this is definitely gonna be a hobby machine, not a business one, if I was in business, I couldnt afford to have these problems.
This purchase says it has a 30 day money back guarantee…will they honor it or will they give you the runaround? I just put mine together (took me about a week) and just don’t like the finished product. I might not have the right speed, right feed, or the right bit, but the result is crappy. Maybe someone want’s to buy this machine.
It was a quick tip machinist. Never said that was the problem. However if you are gonna jump in and complain, and smh everyone, you should probably get rid of that thing, you want help. Ask and accept it, you want to complain and vent… Go to Twitter or Facebook
5 Likes
Im not gonna sell it, plus Ive had it for probably 4 months. I just need to figure out a way to make it a little tougher. I will say that it did a good job once I got it to actually run…but it is definitely not something a business would want to use…for 1, it takes way to long to cut. A simple sign I did for christmas, took about an hour and a half with a rough tool and more than 5 hours with a finish tool. Thats not acceptible for a machine in a business situation. I dont use any crappy tools either, all my tooling is top of the line and pretty sharp. I actually have another job, so I dont have time to baby sit this thing for hours on end. Shouldnt have to anyhow. Breaking a tool is one thing, the machine snapping something is quite another thing. Im not gonna sell it, but Im am gonna figure out how to toughen it up and make it a little more practical to use. For now, I wont be using it any more than for small projects of the hobby nature, I was hoping I could use it to at least pay for itself, Im finding that is not really practical at this time.
1 Like
@Jeanette Henderson. If you all dont like complaints surrounding this item, then the company needs to do away with the bulletin board. Im just telling how it is, sorry that doesnt agree with you. I thought this forum was for all who actually own this system…I guess Ive been mis-informed. My bad. Obviously, you dont own one, since the others kinda appear to agree with me…just sayin…
1 Like
I personally wish there was a way to upgrade the 1000x1000 to a ballscrew deal like the new one. Personally I would rather have that than belts. I think it would run a lot better and not be prone to breaking belts. I mean $30 for a belt is pretty high for what you get, basically a 6 foot cogged belt about a 1/2 in wide when you order the replacement. Like I say, I am right at the tension it should be, any tighter it dont move, any loser, it slips… Computer is not the problem either. I dont have any problems with Easel, been using that for quite a while. Sadly the original machine, seems to not be a very well thought out deal engineeringwise., its almost like they threw something together real quick to get it to market.
You can upgrade your machine to ball screw. Just not thru inventables. There are people out there with the after market upgrades with about anything you want.
1 Like
Belts are fine. You’d be hard pressed to build a ballscrew driven machine for this price. Forget about it if you get ballscrews from a known distributor.
The question is WHY did your belt break?
Too tight?
Rubbing on something?
Unlucky flaw?
NeilFerreri1. Umm…no it wasnt to tight and didnt rub on anything. Like I said, 20 years of CNC so Im pretty sure I onow what Im doing here. To be honest here, the belt is the weekest part of tgd mzchine. Anybody who has ever run CNC anything know that the weakest part of the machine should be the tooling, not the drive parts. Like I said, thd engineering here was not well thought out. There is nothing dpecial about these belts either, its not like they are real fan b ed lt material(which would probably be a lit better) they are pretty much just plastic belts with a rubber covering. If you read everything on here, you will find that the belt system is the most complained about part. If I were running a business on this and the belts broke, that costs me downtime and downtime is money. Bear in mind, as I have said, this is the first real thing that I have cut all the way through on here but in tweaking it, I never had a belt problem. This would be like you building a car and in testing the car never failed, but then you took it on a trip and the engine fell out because of sn engineering flaw…which Im fairly certain this is, after literally having 20 years experience in machining/engineering and programming. You should be able to push your tools beyond maufacturer capabilities if they were built correctly. Any machinist will tell you that fact.
I’ve owned my X-Carve since 2015, upgraded it from a 500mm to a 750mm a couple of years ago, and have yet to have a belt break. The weakest link for me was always the stock Z-Axis which is why I made my own and resolved that issue. Obviously, there is always the chance that one can get a length of belt that has a manufacturing issue, but based on my experience, as long as the belts are tightened correctly and not rubbing the edge of a pulley/idler then they are pretty strong and last. Now, if you are running your machine at its limits then the belts will obviously be under more stress than they would be otherwise and that is always something to consider.
Understanding the capabilities of the X-Carve and its mainly aluminum structure is something that quite a lot of people struggle with especially if they have industrial-scale machining experience. I’m not saying that you specifically do not understand that, but it is a prevalent issue that comes up. Pushing machinery beyond the manufacturer’s limits is never a good idea. Limits are typically set with margin in case something unexpected happens not to allow operators more room to play.
I think people tend to get perturbed when people that have relatively just gotten their X-Carve jump on the forum and for their first post title it “Crap machine.”
The X-Carve is not a crap machine, but it is not an industrial machine. It is what it is - a hobbyist machine, and given the right feeds & speeds one can mill pretty much anything. People do run small businesses with their X-Carves, and you will find some magnificent pieces on this forum.
Keep in mind that none of the majority of people posting on the forum work for Inventables. We are all either X-Carve owners or other machine owners looking to have a nice place to hang out, enjoy nice projects, and help others when we can.
Engineering issues tend to happen to the best of us… I mean look at the Challenger disaster. That was all because an o-ring leaked by. Subsequent failure analysis showed that the issue was there all along; the right conditions just never occurred until then.
The belts are not an engineering flaw. They are belts. I’m just saying…most people are aware of that before they purchase the X-Carve. There are upgrades available, alternative machines, and even the X-Carve Pro if you want something without belts.
I think we all need to simply calm down and get back to making stuff…
{:0)
Brandon Parker
5 Likes
My bad…you guys are all just perfect! I forgot. This is the problem with America…“it didnt happen to me., therefore its bs and must be just an operator error”. Whatever. My bad I ever complained…a machine that costs $2500 should not break on the first run…just sayin…geez! Im not answering anymore of these…if you guys think that you can run a business with this, knock yourself out! Hope you got lots of time and lots of money or plan on going broke. In the meantime, Ill just use mine as a hobby, which is all its really good for. Sad tho, I was kinda hoping I could at least make it pay for itself. Getting a little tired of you all telling me Im stupid…and then say “lets get back to makin stuff”. Your patrinizing is neither funny nor appreciated… Sorry, I ever bothered…I wont be back on this bulletin board, its more like FB than help for anything…smh…
Gonna chime in. I rarely post, but read frequently. I have had my 1000x1000 since March of 2020. NEVER touched a CNC in my life, but I have a pretty good math brain. Like others, I spent 8+ hours assembling mine, reading NUMEROUS posts on this forum, watching NUMEROUS videos on Youtube. Guess what, I have never had an issue with mine. Guessing in days, mine is 280 days old. Know what? I have probably carved with it for 260 of those days. Why have I never had a single problem, even with a belt? Is it an industrial machine? Probably not. Is it a hobbyist machine? Yup. I have made and sold enough projects to actually pay for the hobbyist machine. I have a blast EVERYTIME I use it. Where else can I go, safely (Covid), enjoy myself, create something I am proud of, listen to unlimited music, and have a few beers while doing it? And make a couple of bucks to boot. I am basically getting paid to do something I love. My own garage - my little shop. I panicked while reading a few posts of users breaking belts, so I purchased a set (X-Y-Z) just in case so I wouldn’t be stuck without my unit. Was it $40? Yup. Guess what - again, I haven’t broken a belt yet. Mistakes? Oh yeah, quite a few. I chock this up to learning, something I still do every day. Remember, I have NEVER touched a CNC in my life, until this one. I agree with others, instead of coming on here, and totally bashing the unit, why don’t you share your problems specifically so others can help? You claim to have 20 years of CNC experience, well I have none. Why have I (as well as others) not had problems like you have? I’m not trying to bash on your issues, however perhaps ask this group SPECIFICALLY for assistance. I’ve never met any of these awesome folks, but I see them post frequently, AND assist in helping others like yourself solve problems.
Off my high horse now. I love my “hobbyist, non industrial” machine, and my addictive hobby.
9 Likes