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Hey everyone, im in the stage of finishing up my 1000mm X-Carve set up process, I built the entire machine and did my test runs successfully and moved on to building an enclosure for it. I wanted to share my experience and idea of the enclosure I came up with to the entire inventables community in hopes I may help a few people out who are looking to build the enclosure of there dreams to provide a clean, safe, presentable, and enjoyable hobby.
The CNC enclosure is built out of aluminum extrusions popularly used in the glass and glazing industries, thank you to Ramco Metals in Detroit, Michigan (my employer) we designed a fully integrated enclosure to suit the machine perfectly. I designed this enclosure with maintenance and durability in mind. I provided to access doors on both the left and right of the machine that hinge freely to provide an area to work on the machine if a troublshooting problems occur on machine. There are also a pair of doors in the front of the machine to provide for a loading area of materials you are going to be working on along with another area for any other needs. I’ve had many questions from friends saying “Wow, that looks heavy, have fun moving that out if you move!” this is the point where I give them my Dewalt cordless drill and say its just a 3D puzzle take it apart. Its only a total of 18pieces (not including the glass or panel) it can be disassembled in a matter of less than an hour. Or if your up to man handling it, it can also fit through any standard door opening. In the top of the enclosure I mounted a LED light to provide suitable lighting while minimizing heat output.
Dont forget to check out the pictures below!
Please feel free to ask away with any questions or provide your thoughts on what I could of done differently to improve to enclosure!
I’ve thought about it, there is a lot of labor involved in the prep work of the material plus the cost of the material it can get pricey. I started designing this because its what I do for a living and enjoy the problem solving of designing new products. Although building and selling them has crossed my mind during the process It wasn’t my hopes in the making. If your really interested in one feel free to shoot me a private message and we can look into it for you.
Just a thought, but you might want to consider selling it as a kit where the buyer goes to a local shop and has the panels and glass pieces, you’re just shipping the metal pieces and the cut diagrams for the glass. Of course, the fabrication of the metal pieces may be the most labor intensive part of the job, I don’t have any idea.
Just a few thoughts from an engineer’s perspective …
You might want to make each panel removable via a set of take-down pins, with an internal frame (metal angle perhaps) so that any side, the front or the top could be removed.
Same applies to the front, rather than 2 doors that attach to the side panels (that’s the way it looks in the pics, I might be wrong) you might want a single panel with the doors inset into the frame, so the whole front can be removed, leaving the sides and top.
You might want to split the top into 2 panels, so the front half could be removed, along with the front door panel, leaving just the sides and half the top.
Lastly, thoughts about recessed brackets on the inside of the door panels, so if you add a laser you can just slide in the protective sheets (or blackout panels).
Please don’t take my comments as any sort of slam on your design, it’s brilliant, super clean and very professional looking. You asked for feedback, so I just figured I’d throw out those items that I would have considered during design…
I appreciate the feedback, great ideas, just to collaborate, all panels are removable, they are all mounted with snap on stops and a wedge vinyl to eliminate chatter in the aluminum paneling.
The top is split with one horizontal, making one panel 1/3 of the top and the other top piece 2/3 of the top, I did this to get a good place to mount a bracket in the top of the enclosure to hold my dust collection hose and any necessary wiring out of the way of the machine.
I really like the idea of the slide in brackets for if there was a laser attachment on the machine, its a slick idea!
Once again I appreciate the feedback, this is exactly what I was looking for. The first design is never the best I know that from experience. Thanks DarrylKegg!
I have not ran a price together for it yet, but I will work on it this weekend. If your really interested in one please private message me and I will get back to you with a price. Please note though that there is labor involved with assembling it as it would be shipped in pieces.
Thanks! As I look closer at the pics I see that I missed the panels and the split top
Can you provide some additional detail on the vacuum hose routing?
Looks like the enclosure is pretty close to the exact dimensions of the machine, is it designed to be 48x48 outside dimensions? I ask because I have my XC on a 48x48" torsion box.
Understandable shipping alone would be as much as the machine almost haha, Yeah the enclosure out of my wild guess would be close to the cost of the machine.
I will post a seperate thread of how the vacuum hose is routed. Stay tuned!
And to answer your other question yes the outside dimensions of the enclosure are 48 x 48, I have about a 1/4" gap on both sides of the machine, If I were to do it again I would have to make it a little larger.
I know you may be looking at selling them. Is there anyway you can give us some kind of exploded view I may be looking into building one for mine but I would like to drown the sound out more
I can sure try to and honestly I won’t be building these things and selling them. As much as I’d like to I just don’t have the time and they are going to cost more than the machine itself. But anyways I have actually never worked on an exploded view of a project do you have any recommended softwares? I would love to help out the inventables community as much as possible.
An aluminum Storefront system as enclosure, I love it!
Another suggestion would be to make an aluminum base so you could treat it as a “movable” desktop unit to allow flexibility, and to not have to rely on your table base being perfect. Its hard to tell from the photos but if your side panels are removable are the bottom side beams low enough that you could pass through material from side to side? I find it useful not just for over-sized boards but simply for loading depending where i have my materials or how i have clamps setup.
Yeah that’s a good point, i suppose it depends on what you plan on carving on the machine, lifting the machine up is a great idea because right now your correct I could not place an extra large board through there even if the panel is removed. It’s as easy add on and I might try bringing the machine up to allo me to have that option! Great idea I appreciate the feed back!
