Good morning all, I ordered my X-Carve 1000 on the black Friday deal and I’m anxiously awaiting it’s arrival! I am new to this type of tool but not new to woodworking. I am Mechanical Engineer during the day so the design part really drew me in. I’m looking forward to getting to know some of you guys and further exploring the forum! Just wanted to introduce myself while I wait! Also, if any of you guys have any suggestions of things I should be gathering while I wait I would love to hear them. It seems like my machine should show up somewhere around Christmas time.
1 Like
Welcome to the forum. Go through the build instructions several times so you are familiar with the process when you start. Read as much on this forum as you can. Take notes, if you are not familiar with cnc the amount of information can be daunting. Use the Search function before asking a general question. When you have specific questions (and you will!) provide as much info as you can, pics are great. You can also get familiar with Easel wile you wait.
2 Likes
I am in the same boat as you. Awaiting my new xcarve 500mm.
1 Like
Bits. So many bits! Think about the sorts of projects you think you are going to make and start acquiring bits to accomplish them with. Oh, and pretty wood. And masking tape and superglue (and actual hold-down clamps, obviously 
).
Your woodworking and mechanical engineering background will serve you well. I’m sure you already have some great ideas brewing.
Do you have a workspace setup? You might want to start thinking about where you will put your machine if you haven’t already.
1 Like
So I am looking at bits on Amazon. What kind of bit for carving wood signs
1 Like
I confess I don’t do a lot of signs. I do weird things. But from what I can see of these who do carve signs, 90° V bit seems pretty common… maybe a 60°? I don’t know.
You’ll mostly likely want some teeny tiny ones for fine details. I get 10-packs of cheap 0.8mm and 1/8" bits from China for a couple of pounds per set on eBay, and I do most of my work with them because they’re practically disposable cheap. They can take up to a month to arrive by slow boat, so if you order some now, you should have them before your XCarve is assembled. I use a 1/4" straight cutter for clearing large areas (and leveling my wasteboard). And I’ve got some shapes for when I am feeling creative.
1 Like
Get some cheap bits to start with 1/16, 1/8, 1/4, 30, 60 and 90 degree vbits. Spend some time on this website http://www.designsbyphil.com/ it will get you started.
2 Likes
Check out these people.
High quality tooling and great customer service.
And the quality of our work will improve.
1 Like
Thanks Chris! I’ve been watching a lot of videos and researching the assembly process. I also was planning to open up Easel and see if I could have some simple projects ready to roll when I get it all assembled and ready for testing.
Thanks for the input Kimberly, I will definitely look into various bits. I ordered the starter pack with mine just to have something to work with. I have tons of ideas right now…That’s part of the problem, it seems like there are so many options!
I have a space in mind, but I was considering building a second mobile workbench (first one is used as an out feed table on my table saw) to put it on temporarily. I intend to make some type of dedicated bench for it in the future, but I feel like I need to use it a bit before I will know what I need exactly.
Now you have me curious, what types of projects do you do?
My husband and I designed and built a pair of reception desks for a business last month, and needed a way to consistently cut the inside angles of the side panels, so I put the cuts into Easel, set up a jig, and just repeated that carve 8 times (two desks with twin-walled side panels, two side panels per desk). It didn’t take very long at all to get 8 perfectly matched pieces:
And we also wanted matched cable grommets for the desk, so I borrowed the design of some we saw on Amazon, modified it slightly, and re-created them in Easel to our own size requirement and cut them out of some small off-cuts of oak.
I have posted two other small projects in a thread I started in Projects.
4 Likes
Very creative! I love those cable grommets! I’d say you brought the design to life on those desks! I have some similar ambitions, hence the 1000mm machine.
I want to do signs, letters and other home décor for my wife and to sell, but I also want to cut out speaker boxes for home audio use and maybe do some layered boxes kind of like that laptop desk that is posted on the website. Tons of options, really.
Thanks for sharing!
1 Like
Yeah, like I said, with your woodworking and mechanical engineering background, you will have fun with your XCarve.
I opted for the 1000mm, for the same reason. I didn’t want to have regret later, thinking “if only I’d got the larger size…” Most of my projects (boxes, and other small trinkets) are small enough for the smaller machines, but we couldn’t have completed the desks as designed so easily without the X Carve (we’re still outfitting our shop as we only started in January of this year, so we don’t yet have all the tools we’d like*).
- Does one ever get all the tools they’d like?
1 Like