In the Youtube video link I provide below, I describe a new kit that serves to both mount a Makita RT0701C Trim Router or MLCS 9056 Rocky Trim Router to an X-Carve and provide the key components needed for a low cost dust collection system. I use the Armor All 2.5 Gallon Wet/Dry Vacuum, Model AA255 which only costs around $38 on Amazon. Included in the kit are a mounting plate, two clamps and a dust shoe which acts as a friction-fit attachment to a standard 1-14" vacuum hose. The router sits on top of the smaller upper clamp which only attaches to the router. The larger lower clamp both mounts the router and serves as an anchor point for attaching the dust shoe to the vac hose. Please email me before ordering to make sure I have a kit in stock and to make sure I’m not on vacation. Hoses are of the 32mm type.
Clearly Paul isn’t aware we use the Makita RT0701C in a CNC router, and none of those products he’s peddling would even work for us.
I have a better idea: “We are committed to keeping it a positive and respectful space, devoid of profane, harassing, offensive, or inappropriate language (or actions) and negativity in general.”
I would have deleted my first post if I could have. I’ve seen other people complaining about the lack of that feature in this forum. It was only after I made my first post that I noticed that there was a more appropriate category for it to go. So I just added it there.
Thank you for the encouraging words. Actually I am well aware that people already use the Makita router on CNC machines. That’s what I am doing.
Sorry, I assumed you were spamming advertisements for trim routers, not an actual CNC solution. I can’t even see video embeds at the office due to the firewall. Good luck!
Thank you Pyrex. At one time a YouTube account had to reach a thresh-hold of so many views before the owner was given the ability to choose a custom picture to be used as a thumbnail. They gave me three choices and none of them would have been what I wanted. It wouldn’t surprise me that someone would just glance at the thumbnail and decided I was selling the routers. But I just discovered that I needed to go through a process they call verification before such features are turned on. Thanks to you, I went through that process and the video now has a custom thumbnail.
Well, I’m not a robot. And I only made a second post because I found that the place where I put the first one really should only be for single items that people want to buy or sell. Since the forum provides me no way to delete the original post, the only recourse I had was to post it into the appropriate place. So I made two posts wanting to only have to make one. I will ask the forum moderator to delete my original post.
Another option…just for future reference, click on the pencil icon near the title and you can change the category as well as the title if you wish.
Erik. Thanks a bunch. If I’d known that I would have done it that way. Good information!
@PaulK.Mckneely I think the Makita is probably the better choice and would like to see Inventables offer that. Why do you prefer a shoe that moves with the Z?
I suppose most people do little more with the X-Carve than to carve shallow writing into a flat board. If you wanted to cut at more than one level or the relief was going to be more than a few millimeters, I can foresee the trouble of having to constantly stop the machine and having to manually readjust the level of a typical dust shoe/boot.
One of my interests is in “terrain”. I do a lot of visual 3D work and I have this software that does 3D rendering of CG terrains. That is what made me think so much about machining a physical one using an X-Carve. When I first discovered the X-Carve, I imagined using it to make an exaggerated 3D map of a mountainous area like the ones you see in museums. My first thought was to turn an X-Carve framework into a 3D printer to produce such a terrain additively. If you did it subtractively it would produce an awful lot of chips/dust and a static dust shoe would be pretty useless.
Most of the dust shoes on the market take up a lot of area in the X-Y space so they wouldn’t work so well when dealing with a lot of relief besides limiting your machine’s X-Y travel. Of course one always has to keep their dust shoe from colliding with obstacles. But you never have to deal with obstacles when you only make shallow cuts in a sheet of something. I like to think outside the box and find novel ways to use the machines I have. For example, just last week I used my lathe as a horizontal drill press. I told a mechanical engineering friend that and he sort of rolled his eyes in doubt. My mill didn’t have enough “throat” to accommodate the length of the long bit and chuck but my lathe has a relatively long ways. So I mounted my piece on the table and moved it back and forth to drill two holes that were a precise distance apart. Since a lathe is only a 2-axis machine I had to find plates of the right thickness to set the fixed Z-axis height that I needed. It worked beautifully. I have a manual drill press but getting the alignment precise and spacing the holes the right distances apart was going to be difficult. The lathe worked well. That’s actually how I drilled all of the mounting holes in the clamps for the Dust Dragon.
I think that a dust shoe that moves with the Z-Axis should also be useful for those common projects but it will be the only kind for projects that require a lot of relief. It also lets you easily clear the work area by simply moving the Z-Axis up for inspection or manual intervention when necessary. I can easily do that using “Gerbil Machine Programmer” because it is very interactive. Every time you put your hands on a dust shoe you risk accidentally moving the X and/or Y position while the machine is idle and that can screw up your whole project, especially if you need precision work.
The reason for the Z-independent designs (Suck-it & Inventables) is so the boot/brushes stay at the work surface regardless of the height of the cut. I moved from my own design which moved with the Z to a suck-it because of that. Made a world of difference in the actual collecting of dust.
Arguably, the X-Carve is a special-purpose 2.1D machine where people can add some engraving to an otherwise flat panel. It is also useful for cutting out 2D parts from a panel with thickness. A lot of people like to use it with Easel software because it hard-codes the most common things most people want to do with it. That’s okay. If you ever did a project with strong “terrain” relief, the “work surface” wouldn’t be flat and there would be no level at which you could usefully place the bottom of the brush. Most of the time it would either be well off that surface or crashing into it. I’m a developer and I need to go “off road” a lot of the time. At some point I might decide that I want a dust boot that doesn’t move with the Z-Axis. If I do that it won’t be so darn bulky as the products you mentioned.
I appreciate your feedback. It is good to hear about someone’s hands-on experience.