We use cookies to personalize content, interact with our analytics companies, advertising networks and cooperatives, and demographic companies, provide social media features, and to analyze our traffic. Our social media, advertising and analytics partners may combine it with other information that you’ve provided to them or that they’ve collected from your use of their services. Learn more.
I’m wondering about how user-maintainable the Carvery will be? I realize it is meant to be somewhat fool proof and just plug and play, but what happens when something goes wrong? I’ve seen some issues people have had with the X-Carve, but you can order replacement parts or perhaps hack your own solution.
What happens for the Carvey? Would I need to ship the entire beast back to Inventables? Is the Carvey really just a pre-assembled X-Carve in a box and I might be able to strip-it down for maintenance?
Of course, the reason I’m interested in the Carvey is I don’t really want to do the build and maintenance myself…but I also don’t want to have to go through the pain of shipping it back to Inventables if something goes wrong.
Carvey definitely seems to be the machine I want…but I guess I’m having second thoughts and wondering if I should just get the 500mm X-Carve. (Note: I’m an apartment dweller, enclosed/quiet machine is attractive to me).
From what I’ve seen, you might want to go with the x-carve. Both for cost, and because the stock spindles seem to be really, really weak and failure prone. I doubt there’s room or ability in a Carvey to add the palm routers everyone’s using to overcome that weakness.
I most certainly would. I started out (like a lot of the guys here) with the stock spindle, then upgraded to the DeWalt. It’s a whole WORLD better performance, the spindle is a ton more stable, and it cuts with much less chatter. Also will take much deeper, faster cuts with the increased horsepower and doubled RPM.
I assume the bigger/badder spindle/router will generate more noise. I’ll need to work out an enclosure. Somebody on here had a good idea of using a box with memory foam padding. More research to do.
I have the dewalt 611. I would say it is as loud as a shop vac.
For noise you should consider the water cooled spindles.
Word is Inevitable is working on sourcing some, hopefully sometime soon.
As an apartment dweller you will want an enclosure regardless due to sawdust.
(My next big upgrade is going to be a dust collection system)
I put the 300w 48v quiet cut spindle on mine when the stock 24v crapped the bed.
Nice and quiet, most of what you hear is the bit hitting the wood and you will get that no matter what you decide to run. No problem having a normal conversation right next to the machine while it’s cutting.
Thanks for that. I was going to ask about that quiet spindle.
Thing is I’m not sure I’ll be doing anything too heavy duty, especially early on. If I go the x-carve route, perhaps my best plan would be go with default spindle, and order the order quiet spindle as back up…and if those two don’t pan out they head for dewalt territory.
My advice, if you are going with the quiet spindle, skip the default spindle.
The main advantage of the default spindle is it uses the same power supply as the controller. However, it just doesn’t have the power / durability. I would skip the default spindle and save yourself the time, money and hassle of changing it out later.
The 48v 300w spindle fits the same mount as the stock unit. I have my spindle set up to run independently from the arduino, ie; i turn it on and off manually and have the speed control unit to control the rpm’s.
I did order the relay but haven’t wired it in since there are a few changes needed to the pin outs on the gshield to implement it. and I am not confident in making such changes to the “config” file for the arduino/gshield as yet.
It works as is and I think in many ways better than the original set up (for me ) you can probably drop the header connectors, shrink tubing, (if you dont really need it), and relay circuit if you dont need to control it from the software. I did add a rocker switch from the local hardware store to turn power on and off to the spindle.
I can’t imagine the Carvey would require much maintenance. I’m sure the design team would have designed the Carvey to be pretty much maintenance free.
As with all machines…a regular user inspection, and cleaning routine would be a must to avoid any issues.
