As long as you’re not expecting to be milling aluminum to within .0001" in the first day, you haven’t made a mistake. However, there are quite a few points where it is easy to throw up your hands and give up. Don’t give up, just take a break. The learning curve can be steep if you want perfect results immediately, so plan on just learning for the first few days or so.
I’ve had my X-Carve for over a year now, and I’m very happy with it. It’s accurate to within .003" and can be within .001" if I work hard at it. It’s not very fast, but it’s usually a lot faster than doing it by hand. And it’s a lot more fun to watch than a scroll saw.
Like I said earlier, there will be some points of frustration. Here’s a few friendly suggestions:
- Use blue loctite or a similar thread locking compound on your bolts during assembly. The machine moves and flexes a lot, and you likely won’t notice that something has come loose until you’re halfway through a 10 hour cut on expensive wood.
- Your first few cuts will likely not turn out well. Use scrap wood or MDF since it’s cheap.
- Your first few cuts will likely not turn out well because the machine needs some calibration and pots need adjustment. I have made a series of videos that cover various maintenance/calibration topics (https://discuss.inventables.com/t/x-carve-maintenance-troubleshooting-videos-add-your-own/13405), and this forum is full of people who have learned numerous ways to overcome problems. Additionally, the customer service at Inventables is amazing, so if there are any equipment problems you have them on your side.
- Your first few cuts will also not turn out well because belt tension and V-wheel adjustment take a little bit of practice and experience to get dialed in. Get a cheap fish scale or guitar tuner for the belts.
- Out of the box and unmodified, the machine is capable of a lot. It’s not going to be very stiff, so your cut feeds and speeds may be lower than what various others get with the same bits and material. Modifying for stiffness is not a requirement, but it helps make cuts faster and cleaner.
- You will break bits. Make sure you have a handful of various bits, and come up with a way to test cut depths and speeds. It would be in your best interest to test each bit on each material and record what you think are the best results. A good place to start thinking about how to test your bits is at Precise Bits, Calibrating Feeds and Speeds When Using Carbide Microtools.
- You will mess up, and occasionally weird computer things will happen. You will fat finger your computer and try to drive your bit down 100 inches instead of .1 inch, which will break the bit. You will crash your gantry by hitting the arrow buttons one too many times. You will likely break a homing switch. Stuff happens, figure out why it happened and take a break if you are getting upset or rushed.
- Use the forums. Search for various things, look at the topics with the most replies, and just wander aimlessly through random threads. There’s all sorts of various random awesomeness in here, including projects that can give you inspiration.
- This machine is hobby-level and light, not professional and heavy, so you may be getting it for business but you will never make 1/2" cuts in aluminum at 300 inches per minute. Recognize that it has limits, and push them as far as you safely can.
- Have fun. Never carve angry or upset, that’s how you end up starting to carve with the router unplugged or drive bits into the wasteboard (theoretically…).