Thank you to the Inventables team and a few comments

Easel Easel Pro
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Sorry this got kinda long.

We have been very fortunate in the last few months to work with Inventables on testing Easel Pro. The team was so willing to do what had to be done, developers reached out within minutes of having a problem and in the end came out with a product that helped us sell more product.

The experience of the video shoot was pretty cool too, someone actually managed to make us almost look good :slight_smile:

We are a woodworking company so our shop is full of projects that are not carved BUT we see more and more requests everyday for carvings, engravings and signs. I think I mentioned to @Zach_Kaplan when he was here I don’t want to be in the sign business but hey it pays they bills and it still is better than sitting behind a desk.

Just prior to Mo contacting us about the beta we had been shopping for another machine but we wanted vcarve ability we only had the 500 x 500 and were turning down 5 or more projects a week because the machine was too small. When we saw the beta was for vcarve we bought another x-carve. The machine arrived the end of the July and it fully paid for itself by Mid September.

As far as the machines go we really haven’t had a problem with them, the 1000 x 1000 carved an order of 75 wall art pieces over the course of 7 days just after we built it and short of me forgetting to tighten down clams every piece came out perfectly. In a normal day both of our machines run most of the day. We maintain them, clean them and check them over just like we would our jointer, planer or tablesaw.

I also was taken back by the price of Easel Pro and as someone else mentioned add 25-30% on top of that for us Canadians. Will we pay it? Yes we will. We are woodworkers and don’t have a huge interest in spending hours learning some CAD type software that in the end is only used for part of our business. Easel PRO gives us what we need to sell more product and turn down less projects. I am sure the hobby crew find it extremely expensive but remember they built this for business.

Is Easel Pro missing some functionality? From our stand point the biggest missing piece was vcarved inlay, but my bet is it will come. Other missing pieces? yes but I doubt that Easel Pro will end here.

We are not big forum users so you probably won’t see much of us around but we do answer as many questions as we can on our Instagram and Facebook pages.

Thanks again to the inventables team , we can’t wait to see what your up to next!

Steve and Debbie

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I enjoyed your video. You guys made it look easy.

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Thanks @DebbieLee and @stevelee it’s been an honor to work with you and hear your story.

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Debbie, I can second your thoughts, I have a woodworking company in Canada, as well, I bought the Xcarve 1000 x 1000 to add a unique aspect to my projects, as I have said before to the Inventables team, I thought the Xcarve would be a nice side tool to spice up my furniture and home decor projects, then the word spread and it was signs, signs, signs, and more signs then came beer crates and bottle opener signs. I make nice stuff but as you said Debbie, these signs pay the bills so, whatever signs it is lol.

The Xcarve was great, but there was such long carve times with using straight cut bits, I started to consider buying Vcarve Pro, here in canada that was going to be a 900.00 price tag. and as you said, I had no time to spare to sit down and learn the world of Vcarve pro. I’m busy and at some point once a week my wife demands that I sleep longer than 4 hours in a night…I was fully ready to make the purchase though. I saw the value in Vcarving 100%

So when I was approached to join the Test group for Pro, it came at a day when I was really frustrated with Easel and its limits for my needs, plus a belt snapped on machine in the middle of a 5 hour carve…My repeated expletives could be heard a few farms over I’m sure. I went and sat down at my desk to have lunch. and there was an invite to the Beta waiting.

I had a 60 degree V bit sitting on my bench for some weird reason…so I revved up the machine to test it…I carved 4 or 5 simple test carves that day and they came out exactly how they were meant to look.

I was sold, my wife has been accountant and project manager in the past, so I was complaining about the subscription service plan, her response was this…"is there a cost benefit to the subscription, will it help the business, keep it the same or hinder it? Yes there was speed of production…“ok so the way we cost software subscriptions in project managment is to divide it up to a nomiinal amount per monthly amount of projects, so the customers will inherit the cost, because it allows them to have an improved finished product”

So 25.00 CAD is nominal to me because the time saved on carving and also converting custom fonts in inkscape has gone down,

so my revenue stream has increased. I still sleep 4 hours a day but I get more done on no sleep lol.

Pardon the long winded reply, I just enjoyed reading your story and it being very similar to mine.

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@LanceCameron
@DebbieLee

So I have a freindly question to ask and am I by no means speaking bad about Easel Pro, X-carve, or Inventables and all there hard work

that being said my question is for Lance and Debbie

business to business owner what has attracted you to Easel Pro v-engraving vs. a much more controllable Freeware that is on the market for free (I won’t mention the name of it publicly but its a simple google search away)

You guys both did things with my x-carve that I could not do hince why I bought a different machine and when I was still running the business with the x-carve I researched out new machining methods such a v-engraving as well as software’s

and once I found that software it was a no brainer to switch over to that program just for that kinda work while I continued to use easel for other work

I am just curious if you like Easel Pro because the function is all in 1 place?

I agree sometimes you need to buy a software for 1 feature sometimes but when there is a software already free that will do the same thing and better imo why would you not go with that? you are saving money and adding the capability to your shop

now I understand there are more features coming to Easel Pro but my question is just on this particular launch of Easel Pro and its features over Easel Free

thank you for your time

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for myself, its because its all built in, I can’t stand messing around with importing and converting files, only to find that I messed something up and then need to go back and re do the work, then start the converting and importing again.

I design everything on my office pc by logging into easel, then I save it all in easels cloud, go into the shop and open easel, and rev up the Xcarve, starting the set up process and carve. simple as that, I know if saved because between design and carve I never left the program, yes Pro is limited, but it WILL grow, how much do you think the freeware will grow, this is their software and their hardware, they pretty much go anywhere with the software because its all their creation from beginning to end.

Yes it has some issues currently, I really wish the Vbit stepover setting would just stay at 1% where I set it, but I have to currently leave a post it note on my monitor to remind myself to reset it every time…

To spend $25 a month CAD is a cost to me for sure, but I’m confident in my business to make $25 bucks back pretty easily.

but this is minor whining and complaining on my end

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thank you for your input

I do agree Easel Pro will grow in the future as well

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I’m not really sure I can add much more to what @LanceCameron said. We have about the same process as Lance and it works well for us.

We do a lot of logo carving so until there is a much better trace feature we will still be stuck using gimp and inkscape but for a ton of our projects easel is all that is required, quick and easy.

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Hi Lance,

This is now saved with the project, like other cut settings. If you want to change it from the default, you’ll still need to do that when you set up a new project, but Easel will no longer reset it when you reopen the project.

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I second the above by Phil. At the very least, PLEASE change the default to 1%!