My X-Carve arrived last week and I was able to put it together over the weekend. For the most part things went pretty smoothly, but I did run into a couple minor issues. Here is the finished product so I was obviously able to work around the issues.
Two of the issues related to damaged threads on one of the eccentric nuts and one of the hold down clamps. Fortunately I had the right size taps to fix both problems, but If I hadn’t it would have been a frustrating delay waiting for a replacement eccentric nut. It would be a shame to be held up for such an inexpensive part and it would probably be a good idea to throw in a few spare parts just in case.
Another issue was a bent Z-axis Acme lead screw. The threaded portion that holds the lock nut was not in line with the remainder of the lead screw. When this nut was tightened down if would cause the bearing to bind as the shaft was rotated. The solution was to back of on the lock nut. I think it’s tight enough to hold the belt pulley in place, but it’s only making contact at 1 point.
For the most part the online instruction were clear and easy to follow. A couple of the pictures were a little misleading, but a little experimenting resolved any confusion. I noticed the motor cable was nicely shielded, but the instruction didn’t indicate that the shielding was tied to chassis ground. I went ahead and made that connection at the power supply as can be seen below (the small red lug near the cable tie).
A few more pics of the build.
Next up was to power it up and try it out. I decided to start with a sharpie clamped to the side of the spindle mount and was quickly able to draw the sample demonstration in easel as well as some text. That went smoothly so I installed the spindle and made a quick carve into some scrape oak.
Now it was time to get down to business. I have an immediate job making a batch of MDF game boards. I decided to do the design in sketchup so I had a blast figuring out how to use sketchup and convert it to an SVG file for import into easel. I was having so much fun (or was it an unhealthy obsession) that I stayed up until 3 AM two night in a row. I think I went down every rabbit hole possible before finally getting to a finished prototype.
The workflow I ended up with is to create the design in sketchup and export it as a SVG using the Flightsofideas extension. Then I opened the SVG in Makercam (Inkscape would work too I think) and saved it again. This apparently re-formats something in the SVG file that is required for Easel to open it properly. Ask me how I know. Finally I opened it in Easel and set up the tool paths. I had to jump the obligatory hurdles of Y axis skipping (turn up the motor current to fix) and having the computer so to sleep half way through the job and having to start over. I think Easel is in need of some updates, but it got the job done in the end.
Thanks for a wonderful product! I'm going to have a lot of fun with this and have a lot to learn still with regards to tuning, spindle rates, milling bits, g code optimization, workflow,..........
-Brian
