I just finished building my X-Carve and it works perfectly. The one piece of advice I would offer those new to building an X-Carve is to ignore the advice about crossing the stepper motor cables and gauging resistance in there movement to determine which is which. Simply label the cables through the build process. It made the process very smooth and the wiring/electronics piece stress free. The yellow heat-shrink was purely for aesthetics, and why not; I’m not planning on taking it apart again so I thought I’d personalise it a little. Why yellow? Well, partly in homage to the De Walt spindle, but in reality because I had a lot left over from another project and no real use for it until now.
The dust collection needs connecting up and I’ll be building an enclosure for the electronics, before mounting the whole assembly on a cantilever wall-mounted lift.
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Hear hear on the labels. I did the same myself. Your wiring is nice and neat, good work!
Looks nice!
Admit it, you bought the dewalt because it matched the left over shrink tube you had laying around, right?
I agree about lableing as you go. much easier.
I labeled my cables as well and ignored the instructions. To me, it is a more absolute, accurate, and faster method. I work with electrical wiring everyday in my profession and prefer labels and color codes to “ringing out” cables.
I have to admit that having yellow left-overs does give me an excuse to expand my addiction to De Walt tools, but boringly I already had the 26200 (611 model in the US). It’s was actually owning the very cheap 26200 that gave me the excuse to buy the X-Carve, which is 10 times the price of the router, which makes no sense at all, but I’ve never needed an excuse to buy tools. In fact, if I don’t have an excuse ready I know I can come up with one within a few days. My credit card can testify to that.
There are two nicely placed and unencumbered threads available at the bottom of the left side Y-carriage. I think I’ll bolt (another left-over) a piece of aluminum angle to them so that the Y axis drag chain just rests on it. That way, when I need to move it, the drag chain won’t droop at all. Painted black of course, to match the rest of the machine.
Thanks, not quite finished yet but getting there.
Ok, didnt buy the dewalt to match the shrink tube, but rather,bought the x-carve to match the dewalt.
I like your logic! I think I’ll go try that out on my wife!
On second thought, I think I’ll stick with the forgiveness is easier than permission route…
