No offence, when you start using your X-Carve, we can talk about this again. Even you didn’t trust the system, started to upgrade it from beginning. No matter what, if you’re stick with Belt driving machine you must know how to go easy. You may not have problem if you’re making your carriages stiff enough. What we’re talking here is all these people don’t have ability to put upgrades like yours, nor have Tormach. I don’t even understand, if you’re in love with your CNC, why did you buy X-Carve.
One think you’re absolute, yes we are new starters and most of these guys have very limited budget to run this equipment.
We’re looking Ebay to buy Bits. If it make sense.
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Alan
You are right when I looked at the X-Carve and saw that I could order it to meet my needs and use parts that I had available and software that I knew worked well for CNC. I customized my order.
You are also correct that I like my Tormach very much and I has made a lot of chips. The reason for the CNC router is not to do metal machine work but rather to do router work on large sheets of thin plywood and sheet styrene to cut out frames, hull plating and superstructures and pilot houses for model tug boats, tow boats and barges that are way bigger than the Tormach can handle.
The X-Carve is a good machine and even the stock machine can make a lot of saw dust. There is a step learning curve to learning CNC and operating a X-Carve will stress the person just starting out in CNC as they climb that learning curve.
We that have been doing it for a while are trying to help those that are just starting out.
Dave
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This is my first experience with cnc. The x-carve is a great inexpensive way to get into cnc routing. I’ve had mine for about a month now and have routed many objects with great success. I tend to push the machine to the limit and have found it’s limits many times. I would not call this a production machine. For my needs it is the best machine for prototyping. It’s small, inexpensive and easy to use.
I’m going to play thread-Jesus here and resurrect this. Allen, can this spreadsheet be a guideline for v-bits? Should I use the widest part of the bit? Or the smallest (effectively zero, so that doesn’t make sense)? Or split the difference? I’m trying to v-carve some red oak using the 90-degree v-bit i got from inventables. I tried it on the stock spindle and results sucked. I’ve got the 611 installed now, and it’s marginally better, but it really just doesn’t seem like a smooth cut to me.
In my experience the feedrate does not apply very well when using Vbits since it is not just moving across the material. The bit is plunging and then moving a small amount then lifting and plunging again.
So I would not try to use the spreadsheet for Vbit carving. I just set the Dewalt speed to about 2 for hardwood and 1 for MDF. Not very scientific but it seems to work very well for me.
Thanks Allen. So what kinds of feed rates are you running on hardwood then? I’ve pushed as high as 50 IPM, but after reading, I’m thinking I need to be a lot higher than that.
Using the vbit, I just set the feedrate to 60 ipm. It never actually moves that fast and I am not sure how entering a different value would really change anything. The most important aspect of using the vbit is knowing how deep it is going to plunge. If you have some really wide vectors then the depth can be pretty deep.
In Vcarve I always mouse over the deepest cuts in the 3D view to see what the Z values are. If they are to deep then I will adjust the vector width or set a max depth for the cut.
You just do not want to be surprised when the vbit plunges half an inch into your work.
Thanks for your input. I’ll give this a shot tonight and see how it goes.
Hey guys,
I have similar problem and try Gwizard like you mention before.
Here is a screenshot about hardwood on this software.
Hope it helps
looked at your chart and have a question. What do you mean by too slow?
Too slow means the spindle/router is turning to slowly to achieve a good chip load. You would be trying to push the tool through the material faster than it can cut. So you will either break a small tool or deflect a larger tool. Luckily with the Dewalt too slow is rarely a problem. It is almost always to fast.