X-Carve on Mac

Hello x-carve community, I’m considering to purchase an x-carve. I’m a total newbie to cnc milling, but have some experience with 3d printing. I’m a mac owner and want to be able to work, i.e. design and mill with it. I will work in connected environments (so can use easel) BUT I will also have to work in places without network connection.

I can design and produce stl and svg files no problem.

Is there any way I can use x-carve with MacOS when I don’t have access to easel? Without having to install a virtual machine running windows on my Mac…

Thank you very much for your help to answer this, as for the moment I can’t find anyway forward and I really would like to get the x-carve to start milling away!

@DavidOtt, yes you can.

David, I’m using an old Mac Mini to drive my X Carve without any real problems. I’m using Universal G-Code Sender (UGS) which is available from GitHub - winder/Universal-G-Code-Sender: A cross-platform G-Code sender for GRBL, Smoothieware, TinyG and G2core.

To run it,

  • Get the UGS up & running (open the “jar” file)
  • turn on the X Carve & plug the cable into a USB port on your Mac
  • Set the baud rate at 115200
  • In the “Connection” area of UGS, press the “refresh” button (two little arrows in a circle) which will hopefully find the port you’ll be using. Note - this port name can change each time you re-start this process, but mine is usually called something like “usbmodem431” or something similar.
  • Select the port from the the “Port” drop-down list and then click “Open”

If everything worked, you’ll then have Control of your machine (although on mine, I need to use the $X command on the “Machine Control” tab to reset it it at this point). I then load G-Code files (using the “File Mode” tab) that I want to run.

Whilst Easel, Fusion 360 etc will run on my Mac, I’m currently using VCarve to create my designs & to generate the code - which only runs on a PC. This means I’m creating stuff on a PC, putting it onto a thumb drive and then loading it onto the Mac for cutting.

Hope this all makes some sense - happy to clarify…

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Thanks @DavidWestley for your fast and encouraging reply! I will definitely look into UGS as you suggest.

I couldn’t quite tell from your first post if you were aware Easel can run on a Mac, or if you just meant you wouldn’t have an Internet connection. But If it was the first, Easel will run on a Mac, but you do need an Internet connection. If it was the later David’s reply would be your best solution.

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