@MakerMark yup. the front of the electronics enclosure will have a fan, emergency stop, and usb port. the top will have a window to see the controller board, a power outlet, and the stepper connections. the back will have the power input and the exhaust vents.
This was just dropped off at my warehouse today because a neighbor was going to throw it away. It’s 46 inches wide and about 28 inches deep. I’ll have to add a new top to it and some legs on the back for support but I’m super stoked about this free addition to my work area. Everything inside the doors glides out. It feels like it’s pretty solid as well.
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That will work nicely!
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That is treasure. It’s beautiful.
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Here is un update on where my workstation is at!! Most the trim is done, just waiting on some milling bits to come in to finish the last section and do some touch up paint here and there! Most of the drawers are in, just have to pick up 1 more cheap slide and 1 full extension slide for the file cabinet/drawer that goes under the shelf! And then I have to make all the Drawer Fronts!!
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lookin good!
The chips will be flyin soon.
Really nice, man! Keep up the good work! The carved red edge banding is a great touch!
Had some time at work to weld up the cage for my X-Carve workstation. Just need to lay down the upper and lower boards and start mounting some storage racks on the lower shelf. I finished up the crossbars and painting this am.
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I’ve had my 500mm X-Carve up and running for a month and having great fun. However, my workshop wasn’t really suitable to house it in, as it’s a metal shop, drafty and no room. So I’ve been using it in the house and having to run a vacuum full time plus the noise. Not ideal.
But this weekend the wife and I built a new 12 x 8 shop on the site of our old garage with the main purpose of housing the X-Carve plus wood working and wife’s jewellery making (copper, brass etc.).
Throughly sunburnt, tired but happy. Just need to install shop electrics tomorrow and I’ll be able to cut MDF etc. “indoors” 
The table is my old IKEA desk/shelves combo and is ideal as it’s very flat and has height adjustable feet to get it level. The power supply/shield will sit on one of the shelves with a dust board between that and the main desk to stop it getting chip bound. Now it’s all in I can spend a lot more time with it and start on mods.
Cheers
Ian
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Wow Ian, your shop really is lovely. Not an inch of space wasted. Yours too Rolando. I love the monitor arm on the x-carve table. Also, the white paint makes the space very bright.
Hi Everyone. I wanted to show my progress so far.
My main use for the x-carve will be furniture making, so I thought that some method of vertical clamping would be really helpful. The basis of the approach I’m using is a torsion box constructed of 3/4" MDF with some 1/2" birch plywood to internally reinforce the edges and the cantilevered section. The torsion box is skinned with 3/4"MDF, and there is an additional (replaceable) piece of 3/4" MDF. It is very flat, and very heavy. A slot passes through the cantilevered portion of the torsion box to allow material to be inserted vertically. The whole thing sits on a rather massive base (turned out to be overkill) made of dressed-up and laminated 2x4’s and 2x6’s. With casters the finished work surface is at about 44 inches (I read somewhere that this is a comfortable standing desk height for someone of my size). I’ll get about 43 inches of clearance underneath to clamp material vertically. I didn’t really like the way the X-carve instructions rely on the flatness of a single piece of MDF to hold the machine flat and rigid, so I’m pre-assembling my base on the torsion box. I had to order an extra piece of 20x20mm extrusion and cut it and one of the included extrusions down to 90 cm. The piece facing the vertical slot is a 20x80 mm piece from openbuilds.com. I plan on beefing up my vertical clamping set-up in the future, but this is a good start. I’m going to top it with two pieces of waste-board so that I can remove the piece over the vertical slot when I want to clamp something in the vertical position.
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I really like that vertical clamping set up! It will facilitate doing dovetail type joinery very nicely.
You are going to love having the vertical cutting capability if you make furniture. Then you’ll wish you had a larger open area so you could mount an angle jig in there to clamp wide boards at simple or compound angles under there.
Hopefully you’ve got threaded inserts already in every track, and some stout clamps that will work with them. I have room behind my vertical face and can use c-clamps to hold parts against it. Hopefully the belt-run X-Carve can keep up with all the fun you’re going to have!
4D
@DavidBrown. That 20x80 vertical piece is just the beginning . I’ve got plenty of room under there for a beefier and more functional vertical clamping setup. You are right though, I’m sure I’ll find some critical limitation about 30 seconds after I think I’m finished. That seems to be the way it always goes.
@JohnPattillo, I oversee CNC use in a college furniture design shop. We have two CNCs with beds that can open up for vertical/angled cuts, and they get used that way nearly as much as they do cutting boring pockets and profiles laying flat. You’ll want angled clamping the minute you have a project that has angles other than 90 degrees in it. I’ve cut tenons on the compound end of stretchers for a chair with sides that tapered both front to back and bottom to top. Finger and dovetail joints for 3,4,5,6,and 7 sided boxes. Mortise slots at a compound angle, Etc… You have “almost” a 5-axis CNC when the board under the 3-axis bit can be rotated/tilted in two directions. The creativity of design in our classes has gone up now that the students aren’t afraid of the complexity that comes with non-square designs.
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Hey guys, how do i embed a youtube video? LOL
I need more power over the 48V 400W DC spindle I use on the Shapeoko 2. I mill indoor as you can see and so the Dewalt 660 and 611 or just not an option for me due to noise alone. Plus I wanted something I can control the speed on much better for milling plastic and stone. Too high of a spindle speed on those will either melt the Plastic or destroy the stone end mill. I use a 1.5KW VFD motor on my larger ball screw mill so the .8KW VFD motor seemed a good fit on the Carve. Also helps I saw one at the Inventables office a few weeks back on one of their test rigs.
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Just paste the link into the body of the post.
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