Being able to eat an uncut 4x8 sheet of plywood is huge in the commercial side actually. Weight is considered a positive feature in the CNC world. Having to rip every sheet down to 30” from 48” is annoying as hell, and is extra labor. That’s one of the more annoying aspects of the Glowforge. Those 4” that would let every other suppliers’ materials fit is a big pain. I hat]ve to cut down all the 24” acrylic to 20”. Luckily for me I’m not a business so it’s not affecting my profit.
This machine is cost competitive for this grade machine like a 4x8 shopbot. Those machines weigh more.
I was looking at an American made that was 4x8 foot for $14k and a 6x10 foot that was a lot more but not that much. In the end both just ended up cutting shapes for furniture perhaps with fancy routed edges. trying to engrave with a small radius on a non 2d shape took forever and then took forever to cleanup by hand.
You can really just plug that thing in and it is ready to go? That looks like fun…but at that price the executive approval committee would definitely be hesitant!
I mean, ‘ish. It’s not quite as simple as the Glowforge. But I believe the new pro is not a kit like my original 2015 x-carve was. But you do have to square things up before getting to work, but like the GF, easel pro is web based, so you get that via the inventables site.
But if you already know how to do 2.5D art (and if you use a Glowforge, you do) then it’s pretty quick to get up to speed. You will need a serious table to put this on, even mine you need pretty rigidly made table as the spindle carriage weighs a lot so you need the table to not-resonate. Plus dust collection needs to get set up (you want a cyclonic root of the shop vac (I use the Oneida 5gal dust-deputy). I mean with 2 people you can be up and cutting within the hour. This takes up way more space than you think! One of the biggest mods I’ve added to mine was relay control of the spindle and dust collection, so if I am doing an overnight carve, it shuts itself down when it’s done (on the original desalt powered one, the brushes only last around 180hrs, so just running all night burns a lot of brush).
It’s also loud! Although after running a x-carve with dust collection you won’t ever complain about the Glowforge’s fans!
None of the features of the x-carve pro aren’t on the regular one except speed/power and size. So if you aren’t running a big sign business or CNC part cutting business the regular 1000mm one is likely just fine for you (that still lets you drop a 30x30” piece in without tiling).
The one thing you do get from inventables is really good tech support. Since the machine is user assembled they support modded machines without the usual hassle. Although I do note in the FAQ on the pro, they comment that adding a laser to them x-carve pro likely voids the 1-year warranty. The j-tech photonics laser is the most common one to add. I am tempted, not because the Glowforge isn’t a vastly superior laser cutter compared to a small 7W laser, it’s that I want to be able to laser engrave/mark much larger pieces (particularly the part I just cut on the x-carve). Unfortunately in looking at the j-tech site I don’t honk their mount would work with my dust collection mechanism.
OK, I couldn’t wait. So I took the plunge (one of the steppers is back ordered… (although I will probably need one more for X- but Y is a bigger issue most of the time for power): The one big advantage of my ancient (original 2015) x-carve is they had not gone to the connectors on the steppers instead my model has small barrier strips for each stepper, so I don’t have to repull the wires all the way through the drag chain (the original drag chain doesn’t “open” so you have to pull stuff through). But this way I just cut the stepper leads to length, crimp on spade lugs and put them into the barrier strips. I imagine I will have to recalibrate the stepper drivers (which can accommodate the 2.8A these babies draw) but otherwise the only thing I have to do is adjust the steps in software (they have good values already)
Which still requires ripping down sheets vs. the 4’ for the pro. I mean like I said, if I had to do it again, I would go with the CNC4Newbie NewCarve, which is not much more than the x-carve and virtually the same size (30x30) and way, way stiffer and more powerful. But in 2015 there weren’t options like this. People have of course modded the x-carve to take full sheets (harder to increase width than length. There are some 1800mm Y-axis x-carves out there which requires some clever bracing, but going wider requires a way-beefier x-carriage. CNC4Newbie’s 48" machine is $4300, and that does not have VFD spindle for that price. at this point I would much rather not have a router based machine, but hard to beat the price.
I love that X-axis. I didn’t really haven’t thought about upgrading the other stepper motors. Do you feel like maybe with the bigger steppers one should consider upgrading the belts (9mm?) too?
I certainly could. I was trying to keep this as small a project as possible. A lot of folks have done the 9mm GT3 upgrade. But then you have to machine the tensioners to accommodate the wider belts, etc…
I decided after doing some reading that if you’re going to put in super powerful steppers, you can’t use the wimpy belts that came with the machine so they are getting upgraded from a GT2 6mm generic belt to 9mm gates 3rd generation GT3 belts (I mean I already had to buy new pulleys anyway as the originals are press-fit on).
I did speak with the CNC4NEWBIE guys and they said for my era x-carve, where the steppers didn’t have plugs, but instead went to a berries strips, that totally appropriate to cut the wires to the length of the originals and crimp some loop connectors on the ends and go to the barrier strip
Well actually when I first wired it out, the z-axis was reversed (jog up jogged down). So I reached behind to swap the green/black pair. I was sort of in a hurry and didn’t think to shut down. When I went back to test it, the x-controller (the brain) was totally dead (no power light, no cooling fan, etc). My initial concern was I had blown the motor drivers, but then figured they must have isolated the drivers from the main controller, so that seemed weird even if I did dead-short the leads. Then I recalled when my machine had last seemed dead, that my e-stop button is kind of finicky and can seem to be released, but is actually somehow stuck on (machine e-stopped). So I jiggled it (pushed it, released it a few times) and the machine booted right up and then I realized that in fact my wiring was right the first time, but clearly on the old z-axis I must have reversed it so the reversal mask was engaged for the z-axis ($3=4 [000100]) so when I reset $3=0 (no reversals) the z-axis works normally. That ballscrew drive along with the massive stepper sounds so much more impressive than the older belt-driven acme screw drive. What’s funny was someone complained that the stepper whine was so much louder than the older model. haha. Seriously, once the router is going along with the shop-vac/dust collection who can hear anything? Honestly it’s louder than being on stage at The Who in the 1970s!
