Folding cabinet, full enclosure with dust collection and other cool stuff!

Hi from France !

The last few months i’ve been working on a cabinet for my first CNC, an inventables x-carve. It’s almost finished now, and i thought i would post some pictures and videos here to show how it’s made because it can look “weird” at first look.
Based on very helpfull inspiring videos found on you tube channels and posts here on this forum, i added my own ingrédients and came up with this strange Z shaped foldable cabinet. Hope you will enjoy it ! Don’t really know where to start… Please feel free to comment or leave feedback, whether you like this “thing” or not!

folded …

unfolded and…

ready to use!!


here a quick video of the cables squaring the cabinet.

some detail pictures;














detail of the vaccum system. Not totally functional yet, i still have to bring the hose inside the torsion box and out again through the “metal hole” (don’t know how it’s called in english)






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nice job

Looks like you have more invested in the cabinet than the actual Xcarve. VERY nice work. What are the 4 buttons behind the swivel out corner panel for?

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Hi Traxxtar, thank you for the kind comment. I did actually spend LOT more money on the cabinet than on the cnc itself (please don’t ask me how much…). The buttons are activating various elements ; the two red on the left activate the controller and the router, and the two blue on the right switch on the vaccum and the light Inside the enclosure; red= critical , "think before you push on it ", Blue is “keep cool, nothing terrible happens if you push on it while working!”

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Thank you RobertCanning, i really enjoyed working on this, even if i spent wayyyy too much time for "just a machine " according to some…anyway, a nice looking tool is essential to me to make good work.

Thank you BillBlades. Don’t know yet if the cabinet will be worth the effort, but it sure will allow me to work confortably in a dustfree environment. I was also hoping the enclosure would be more efficient to reduce the noise of the router, but it doesn’t ; the main panels are 5 mm plexiglas, except for the front panel witch is a real double layered glass (heavy as hell by the way…) that i had taking dust in my workshop for years. About the laser, not sure to understand exactly your point about the “laser filter panels”, but i don’t own one for now; it could indeed be a great addition to the x-carve in the future.

That’s not your fault. In order to contain noise you need to isolate surface area vibrations and glass isn’t the best media to do that. However your skills to build a cabinet are excellent, and it’s one of the nicest cabinets that I’ve ever seen here. I’m in the process of designing my own torsion box and cabinet and yours is a great inspiration. I especially like the details that you incorporated, like the hidden controls. Job well done :+1:

That is a totally awesome setup.

As a side note is no one going to mention the giant Lego man in the background that thing is incredible.

I’m very impressed with the cabinet and setup. Like others have said, the hidden controls are a very nice addition as well. Definitely makes me cringe when I look at mine but gives me motivation to clean it up.

I’m curious about your dust collection setup. Could you post a picture from the back of how you have it set up? It looks like you built really nice boxes around your Y motors and the dust collection goes through one.

Great job!!

Hi, thank you Ramon!
About the giant Lego man, it was made in cardboard by a friend who made several other lifesize “special” lego characters (batman, etc…) . He is currently building his own cnc/laser machine to cut the numerous cardboard elements involved in the making of his costumes (he is tired of cutting everything by hand, lol!). The thing will be huuuge, with a 20 Watt laser i believe, a 2kw spindle and a 3000X1500 mm work area !! Actually, the many metal parts laying on the floor next to the x-carve are parts of the frame of the machine…

This is amazing work… Looks stunning as well. Great Job!

Oh wow, I didn’t even see that (on my tiny screen). Very nice detail!

Nice work. How stable is it when the x-carve runs?
My table has casters and it wobbles.
What type of vacuum hoses are those?

Hi Stephen, thank you for the comment . The cabinet is surpisingly stable considering that the front foldable tablet for the computer is more or less 1 meter ahead of the gravity point witch is more or less the pivot point! To be honest, when the router moves from left to right, nothing moves, or very little; When it moves towards me or to the rear, the tablet shakes a little bit, but nothing extraordinary. Overall stability is great, even when the brass tubes (pivot point on the “knee” of the feet and blocking pin on the rear) are loose. Initially, i planned to tighten everything with brass bolts, but it seems to hold enough for the moment.

The reason i see to explain this stability is multiple;

  • the whole cabinet is VERY heavy, i would say between 100 and 150 kgs (!!!) ; each one of the two Z shaped legs wheigts aprox 20 kg and is made of two 10 mm ash layers and has a 8 mm Z shaped welded steel bar inside.

  • Between the two legs are two 70 mm square section steel bars (3 mm thickness) with 18 mm steel rods running through them to tighten the feet together and hold the rear wheels. This adds an extra 20 or 25 kgs i think.

  • The 4 crossed cables beneath the table work incredibly well to square up the whole cabinet and make it very strong. i don’t have detailled pictures right now to post about this cable system (tomorrow), but it was one of my greatest surprises during the making of the cabinet to see how efficient this system is! without them, even when the brass bolts on pivot points and locking pins are tightened, the table moves due to the shape of the legs . Once the cables are tightened, it’s a miracle!! nothing moves, in any direction. And it’s just simple 4mm stainless steel cable . Tension system is ultra simple, using pelican hooks, and idea from back when i worked in a shipyard. And cherry on the cake, i don’t need to touch anything to the cables to fold the cabinet in vertical storage position, and above all, once the cabinet folded, these same cables hold the torsion box in position, preventing it from turning all the way around on the pivot point. I must say that this last “trick” was reallly unexpected, and made me so happy! This is SO COOL, and means that as we say here in France (do you say that in the US ?), the toast doesn’t ALWAYS fall on the butter side!

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It’s made for CNC’s , reinforced with a spiral steel wire. Outer diameter approx 44 mm. Bought it here, not online, at the local woodworking supply shop. If you want to know the brand and/or model , i can check that tomorrow when i go to my friend’s house where the X-carve is (don’t have the rorom to keep it in my house currently, i will have to wait a few months more to get my own workshop! :smile:

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Hi Patrick, Thank you for the kind comments! Unfortunately, you will have to wait untill tomorrow to get more pictures of the dust collection system, I don’t have them right now. I must say i was quite worried about how to manage the vaccum hose inside the enclosure ; From what i saw, most people fix the vaccum hose high above the router, so that machine doesn’t get stuck in it when it moves on the “dancefloor”. To my knowledge, most CNC enclosures are very “tall” (heigh ceiling) for that reason.I noticed that inventables recently came up with a new system using a metal pipe fixed to the makerslides and bringing the hose right above the center of the table, but this wasn’t suitable for my need ; from the beginning i wanted an enclosure that would take little space when the X-carve is not in use, in vertical position, to leave as much room as possible in the workshop. And also, i wanted to be able to open, close, or slide the enclosure while the machine runs, making it impossible to fix a hose on it’s aluminium frame (even if i had the necessary clearance above the router, witch i haven’t!) Looking at bigger CNC’s, i noticed that the vaccum hose was often fixed to the drag chains and moving around with the spindle, instead of just “floating” above it. And i came up with this solution. The system is not totally finished yet, but more pictures tomorrow should give you clues of what it’s going to look like :spy:

by the way, i made this additionnal enclosure for the vaccum. It sure dampens (correct word ?) the noise a lot, but not sure if the vaccum is going to grow old being stuck in this for hours, because it gets VERY hot, despite the hole on the top of the box…

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Cut a hole in the bottom of the vacuum box for thermal updraft. That should cut down on the heat a bit.

Very cool set up. The finish work is fantastic.

What is the material you used for the lining for the vacuum enclosure?

looks like carpet underlayment foam.