I did build it this afternoon
That looks awesome! I spent the morning in my shop rearranging things and getting ready to build a bench for my x-carve. Nice job!
Do you have plans for it? If so Iād do a blog post or something once you get the X-Carve on there. Looks like you thought through a lot on that thing. Maybe once people get a bunch of them out there I could do a round up with all the coolest stands and table set ups?
I donāt have plans I just had the bench and built around it, I also put electrical outlets in it so I could plug everything in.
Would it be possible to do this with some version of a homemade printing press? Something that would apply even pressure over the whole area with the pull of a lever?
Side note: The save the date cards look awesome and I was curious about the bit you used to achieve what seems like really fine detail in some of the letters?
Basically have the same thing in mind. My girlfriend had the cuttlebug and she got tired of it very quick as the folders end up getting expensive when trying to collect a few and the way the folders are built you were very limited to where you could actually emboss the paper because of the fold.
I want to try and make the stamps and then try to do a positive and a negative releif the actual size of the paper to attempt to emboss the paper itself to get the letterpress feel.
Other option, I havenāt explored is that we have a guy that does it locally and may try and go talk to him about his machine and see if I can just make up some woodblock templates and see if he would let me run them if I ended up helping him in any way.
We will see, still need to get info on here about someone shipping one to Canada and what if any issues they have.
Hi @HughMckibbin to Canada we offer both USPS and UPS. In our experience USPS his better to Canada because they donāt charge additional brokerage fees where as UPS will charge up to 30% of the price of the goods.
Have you had other issues shipping from the US to Canada?
Yeah brokerage fees have always been a concern when shipping things from the states. I have purchased things in the past (car parts, brakes, kegs, concrete molds) from various locations and the odd time extra fees seemed endless. I was getting charged for the states my package went through, then the extra 20-30% for the brokerage fee to get it into Canada.
I actually use a kinek point just across the border now for the majority of my stuff and just drive across and pick it up then just pay the taxes on the way back.
USPS seems the way to go I guess. 30% on larger expenses like this, Iād rather put that money towards purchasing other mods or parts for it 
How about using the machine for hole drilling? I would like to drill a lot of holes in a piece of sheet metal (like brass or aluminum), with very small holes and fine pitch. Will the machine work will with a drill bit made to fit a collet? Can the machine drill motion (just up and down, no lateral movements) without snapping the bit. I would hope to start with very small bits like 1/64".
I want to replicate something like this project I did on a laser cutter, but at a smaller scale with a finer pitch. julia set halftone 1 | halftone cut with laser cutter. Made ā¦ | Flickr
Anyone tried anything like this?
Thatās pretty cool. I could easily see a variable hole grid like that used in computer or other electronic casings for a little more class than just.a fan grid where cooling was needed.
And yes I suspect the Xcarve can do that just fine, possibly with the right bit do a vertical only drill for the smallest holes but then move them in small lateral circles to make bigger hole sizes with the same bit.
Wow that is really cool. I noticed the image is called ājulia set halftoneā, is it a generative thing? Was it generated as a raster or vector? If you could generate it as a vector, specifically an SVG file, you could load that design directly into Easel and cut it.
Youāve got my gears turning about similar variations on this ādot matrixā themeā¦ Iāll post if I have any time this week to try something out.
@ChrisWundram yes both Easel and X-Carve can make holes. You can do it with a milling bit.
If you use a drill bit you probably need to use much slower spindle speeds.
Also you need to make sure you have tool paths that only use drilling operations. You donāt want to accidentally mill a pocket with a drill bit as it will break.
A 1/64" bit is very very small. You should expect many of them to break during the process. This type of design might be better suited for laser cutting or water jet cutting.
On the topic of broken bits, how hard is it to replace the bit and resume the job without starting over from the beginning. Does easel handle this case?
The cut in the picture was done on a laser cutter from a vector file made in Mathematica. Laser cutting has some limitations in material (no metal), and pitch (too many holes too close together just results in a charcoal).
It depends on the situation and your setup. Stock, the machine has no feedback about its position. It has high precision stepper motors to keep track of its location. If, however, something forcefully knocks the machine off where it should be (like accidentally running it into the side plates), the motors will āslipā and the position is lost. Generally snapping a small bit wonāt throw off the machineāyou can just hit the āstopā button in easel returning the machine back home, then jog the machine to a convenient spot to change the bit, and run the job again using the āUse last home positionā button during the homing walkthrough.
If you have limit switches, you can recover from situations where the machine has lost steps, either forcefully or because of power loss / disconnecting the machine from your computer, although in that situation it can be difficult to get the exact right home position on the material.
Chris, I have never ran into the issue of the bit breaking during the job. It is either before or after while switching out the bits. They are very brittle and so doing something like dropping it on the cement floor could have a negative effect on it. I have engraved in some pretty hard wood like pecan with a 1/64" bit with no issues. The only thing I could see causing the bit to break is either your depth of cut is to deep or it is moving to fast.
For a softer material than the linoleum, you could 3D print your design with flexible TPU materialā¦ Check 3D Hubs for a printer near you that can print in a filament called ninjaflex.
Or reverse mold the design into a pad made from Sugru or oogooā¦
@HughMckibbin, @sketch42 I forgot that Inventablesā resident awesome-project-maker @TaitLeswing made a great project with instructions and photos on how to make a stamp in Easel. It demonstrates how to āraiseā the stamp design out of the area around it (since the design has to be ātallerā than the surrounding material) as well as how to flip the design so that it reads the right direction (I made this mistake so many times Iāve lost count). Check it out: Simple Stamp | Inventables
And you can make the press it self as well
Cool project!
There is a rubber stamping pad that you put under your project to get an even stamp
I have great success making inlay cutting boards.
At first I thought doing inlay would be a lot of work. Fortunately, between the accuracy of the CNC, glue, and of course sanding, the final project is quite good.
They are easy to customize and make great gifts.
You can make the cutting boards yourself, or be on the lookout for cutting boards that are on sale.
Turn a generic cheap cutting board into a work of art!
1 Like