Monster Carve - also known as UPS guy hates me now.
With my project finally taking shape I think it is time stop derailing Angus’s thread and start my own.
Disclaimer: This is not a guide ! I sailed here into land of unknown and there are quite few things I would do different now.
Let me first give you some background to what I’m trying to achieve here .:
I don’t build things for living and this is just my weekend hobby. I started to look into CNC machines during work on various home remodeling projects. Being IT it was just natural to have computer build things for me.
What fascinated me the most was various flat pack furniture than can be build from plywood and other fascinating materials. Sadly I realized quickly that commercial machines and kits like for example cncparts and shopbot were just simply out of reach for me.
I stumbled upon 1000mm Xcarve kit and decided that this will be great platform to learn on and possibly size it up down there road to achieve my target or 4x8 stock cutting.
Things like ultra precision, speed, sound are fairly secondary for my needs and while I’m still speculating here I believe I can achieve where I’m going with xcarve design. Should this not work out there is still quite few upgrades I could do that are fairly reasonable if I build solid base for the projects. For example pinion system, dual shaft nema motors, wider belts, custom X rail, bigger water cooled router etc etc.
Let me start with some pictures of where I’m at so far
It all started with dear friend of mine offering me for free 6 x 6 feet long 1.5 inch by 3 inch extrusions.
After the trouble if him having to ship it with UPS it was for me point of no return.
Once I received them I was able to figure out that they come from amazing gold mine 80/20inc Their prices are very reasonable and I belie the can ship extrusions up to 108 inches long using standard UPS rates in us.
Next thank god to black Friday inventables coupons I was able to purchase long extrusions. I purchased two 1.8m and 1m rails for Y axis and two 1.8m for X rail.
Next issue I faced was connecting 1.8m and 1m rails to create long 2.8m piece. While base of my build is using 15 series extrusions (1.5inch), x carve extrusions are 20 series (20mm) I knew I can’t use any type of standard plates (I was wrong about it but bit more about that later).
I came across of something designed for Shapeoko, Makerfoot I figured I can use it to support my rails and create solid mending point for my long rails. I ended up cutting both pieces into 4 sections, 3 equal size and one bit longer one to support the joint of makerslides.
With that done next step was experimenting with various ways of connecting 80/20 extrusions. I purchased few pieces and while all of them worked just fine most of them was just way overdoing it and adding just adding to much cost. I finally settled on using 4 corner 45 degree supports you see on pictures and bunch of flat plates you see on the bottom.
For cross bars that will hold most of the weight of waste board(s) I just purchased 10 pieces of their 72 inch 1.5 inch extrusions and trimmed each to 34 inch long. I used all the left overs including one long sections to create about 2.5 inch long spacers to lift the beams to desired 3 inches leveled with tall sections.
That is where I’m at now.
Next step I’m planning to hinge side of the unit to be able to fold it on garage wall. The plan is to use square pipe that my wife promised to weld for me and remote controlled 880lb winch I scored for 109$ from harbor freight.
I’m also waiting for inventables to ship x controller before I start cannibalize my 1000mm unit for parts.
On that note if anyone is interested I will have all the parts necessary for 500mm to 1000mm kit upgrade.
