The most I can do right now is about $1500 on the high end. That is why I was considering an X-Carve.What's your budget, Chuy? How often do you plan to use the CNC? Are you going to be doing just signs and plaques or will you be wanting to do short production runs on engineering type pieces? The requirements, and cost, for these are different. You can do signs and plaques all day long on a more robust and rigid machine along with the engineered pieces in quantity. A smaller and lighter machine may not be as repeatable or accurate as the heavier and more rigid machines but that doesn't matter as much on signs and plaques.
David
Wow, this is the first time I have seen someone endorse a Chinese product. I will look at the reviews, thanks.I agree.
Get a proper CNC router with a 2.2kW watercooled Variable speed spindle that will take 1/2" shank router bits. The X-carve use a std noisy 1/4" router.
A chinese made CNC machine is NOT very expensive.
I've got a Chinese made 6040 CNC and run Mach3.
I use a cheap CAM software called HEEKS CNC (US$10-20) with which I can do 3-D carvings with it.
CAM software can be very expensive and hard to learn. So I recommend the cheap MACH3's wizards add-ons to get 80% of your cutting or carving jobs done very quickly.
Thank you for the advice. I know there are much better routing machines out there but I am not going to fool myself and say that I am going to get one if I don't have the money.crookedkut,
I purchased the x-carve 1000. It was cheap and easy to put together. I did not buy any of the homing switches. I did buy the clamps. Don't buy the tool PKG. It was very basic, but for what I use it for it is great. It is not as heavy duty as some. So it depends on what you want to do with it. The 700 is smaller and I started to go with it and then measured it all and upped to the 1000. The 1000 will do a project without tiling at about 38 inches by 38 inches. So far I have not needed anything larger. The 700 would not have done some of the projects I have done.
I bought a smaller unit earlier and paid more for it than I did for the X-Carve and it was a mistake from the start as it was not large enough for what I needed unless I Tiled in X and Y directions. Set up for Tiling is a pain to me. If you make the slightest of errors when Tiling, you will pay a price.
Overall I would rate the X-Carve at a 4 out of 5.
There are Vids galore to help with the assembly and the support group is fantastic. If you email, they answer back within a very short time and if you call, you may have to wait for a tec, but not very long. They can tell you and explain to you what it is needed. If you have Team Viewer on your computer, they will show you right on your computer what you need to do, to make it work the way you want. Team Viewer is no cost. Software of your choice. I paid about 1500. The directions were good, and you have a little experience building this type of project, it will no problem. Time is the issue, about 9 hours for me to put it together. Be sure you have enough space to lay it all out on. This was key for me. Good luck and I hope this may be of some help to you.
I would not know where to start if I wanted to build one. Don't know how far I can get with $1500. I don't want to start. If I decide to build the machine and I end up running out of money I don't want to be stuck with half a machine.Please do comparison of the specs first. X-carve is for carving mainly.
Those CNC machines have height and more accuracy and can do more. You can even add a 4th axis and even make precision soft metal parts for YOUR OWN bigger CNC machines if you want to build one.
CNC is more than carving and sign making. If you learn Mach3 or Mach4 gcode programming, you can even mount a circular saw on a track to just cut straight. It would be even better than a table saw since the reference is the track and not just a fence.
Plasma, waterjet, laser systems all use the same G-CODE principle so you will be be learning how people cut metal, glass, marble, wood, cardboard, food TOO.
There are a lot of happy users of those machines on YOUTUBE. They bought them locally from US importers.
I had helped a church member import & installed a full-size CNC router from USA. It cost 30,000. His son is now still using it to make money making building materials. They also 2 large CNC lathes.
