Xcarve

[Desertboy]

I am looking at taking an adventure into the world of CnC routers with me eventually building a 5 by 10 foot machine.

But first i need to extend the workshop to fit it in

I am considering the X-carve as a stop gap as it will fit in the shed

Why?

It is a one stop package
It has support
I gives me lessons to learn

What are folks thoughts on it

I looked at the Xcarve and shapeoko seriously before I started to build my own, I came to the conclusion it's overpriced for what it is and a bit too toy like. Reviews are skewed on youtube because they gave them away for free and the few reviews you see where people actually bought it are no where near as complimentary. You can do a lot with an xcarve seen one working in real life they're not atrocious but they are toys you build a lot better for not a lot more. V wheels make poor linear slides aluminium is softer than the wheels and ballscrews are better than belt drives. Xcarves have a lot of flex they can be strengthened but better to build properly in the first place.

We support each other here and I've found it very educational.

If possible find a member local to you with a working router they built themselves and go see them first before you decide on buying Xcarve you might just decide to build your own it's really not that hard if you outsource all the work like I did.

KJN aluminium will supply, cut and drill the extrusion making the frame child's play. Design is not that hard, plenty of people will help you on here. You can get your aluminium mounting plates made by fellow members, Hiwin's & ballscrews from Alixpress.

I managed to recover some of the parts I'm using but if I bought everything new I could build a router like the one I am building for £2-£2.5k depending on if I used an arduino or proper steppers and how lucky I was with import tax from China. I have been real lucky and paid £15 in import tax on everything I bought should have been about £80. My work space is just over 1.22m*0.85m Z travel is ~15cm but you can easily get 1.22m*1.22m for £200 more.

Where are you in the UK?

On the 10*5 it's just not worth building yourself if you have the space for it to go as you can buy working ones (Or spares and repairs) cheaper on ebay even with fixing them than you can build yourself and often better quality. 8*4+ routers just don't seem to hold their value probably because they're too big for home users and most people haven't got 3 phase although you can get 1 phase to 3 phase converters it's normally easier to swap electronics over to single phase.