I don’t have a lot of issues with the ShopBot except that it’s more tedious on job execution. Having to change the mills between operations is a PITA and the speed is not nearly as fast as the laser. Calculating speeds & feeds is tedious but if conservative can be stored in the library and reused pretty easily (but then that means I sacrifice potential speed improvements ). VCarve is pretty solid and insulates me from needing to worry about the G-code.
Overall though, more projects for lasers than for CNC in my current world
This. So much this. I have no animosity toward the X-Carve, but I just don’t use it. Way too much work getting things set up, fixturing, probing/homing, fussing with the software, guessing at feeds and speeds and tools, not cutting through all the way or cutting into the wasteboard (that thing isn’t even close to flat), bumping into the fixtures, tightening the belts again, cleaning up the godawful mess it makes.
I’m a very stupid person when the lust for toys clouds my judgement. I actually have two X-Carves. I didn’t get any use out of the first one, so of course when they came out with a new model, I was first in line. Then I upgraded it with a PID speed controller and a vacuum attachment. Still don’t use it.
I’d offer the old one to anyone who’s interested, but I took the controller off at one point (to upgrade to the X-Controller) and can’t guarantee all the pieces are there.
I’m actually hoping that having the Glowforge will reinvigorate my interest in milling for the applications where it’s more suited, and I’ll fire the ol’ girl back up.
When you say “futzing”, do you mean “deliberate interaction” or do you mean something more like “randomly changing things in the hopes of stumbling on something that works”?
Or, maybe a better way to understand what you mean is to ask for some examples of things you didn’t like having to do.
I don’t want to pile on too much (yet) but I will also mention that CNC machining will require MUCH more deliberate interaction than laser cutting.
the one problem I couldn’t get over was the web ui. I’m going to either sell or put a smoothieboard in the xcarve so if I want to I can fire up notepad and just start typing Gcode. Control = ownership.
Well, it would be interesting to hear how @support handles one of the first resales of a Glowforge from a previously registered user. Too bad we’ll probably never hear about it.
Hate to say it but xcarve is a very time intensive machine, you really have to learn the minutia of it to produce quality work. I got mine in January while waiting for the Glowforge. It took me two weeks to assemble, and months to figure out the basics, I’m still honing designs to work better in real life, mostly by tricking easel into thinking it’s working with a different bit than it is.
You have to trick it into thinking you’re using a different bit?
In your opinion, why do you think the bit you are using isn’t selectable in Easel? Is it a “they only sell this certain selection of bits so that’s all they support” thing? Is it a “people who are technically illiterate have money and they want it so they’ve dumbed-down the UI” thing? Could it be the elusive “the software is so powerful that they probably haven’t had the time to include this specialized use-case yet, but it’s probably coming”?
Or maybe “they’ve made the UI so ‘easy’ that once you step outside their narrowly-conceived parameters the software becomes completely useless”? That one is my favorite.
Most like the last option you described. I do multiple runs for one piece because if I select the smallest applicable size it will take a ridiculous quantity of time on anything that is not simply a cut line, but if you say to bit is bigger, it won’t attempt to cut anything that is fine than the thickness of said bit.
When I started, I couldn’t afford a computer had could run fusion360 well enough to spend under an hour drawing up anything more complex than a cube. The graphics and RAM required to run 360 smoothly is more than most CAD software by a long shot. I really wanted to use Fusion360, really, I tried. I’ve found a way to do pretty good work on easel, it was just a matter of learning what the software needed to hear, to do what I wanted it to.
). VCarve is pretty solid and insulates me from needing to worry about the G-code.
