@pixelsilva I should hire you as my agent you promote my stuff better than I ever could lol
@glyphiks The cloth was just an afterthought to add some protection for the veneer since the press surface had some imperfections that could have left grooves in the finished deck surface. I don’t think it’s necessary at all and is probably more trouble than it’s worth once you get enough glue dripped onto it.
I wondered this too while playing around with designs. The only experience I have with deck pressing is what you see in the pics above, but the straight cut seems to work fine when only pressing one deck at a time. The deck I did was 8 ply + a laminate layer if I remember and it came out pretty damn well. Now if you get into stacking a fat chunk of multiple deck layups into one press I’d imagine you need to accommodate for the extra material removing volume from the top side of the press.
Ok so tbh I’ve purposefully let this and other projects sit on the sidelines for awhile. I came up with some ideas I wanted to implement and bring to the community but just haven’t found the right time to do so. I can go into the reasons in some other more appropriate thread, but basically I believe in doing things right and not rushing into something unprepared.
Things do seem to be on an upward trend lately though so I’m hoping I’ll have the resources to start making some cool shit for you guys before too much longer
Yes, i stil have that xcarve. Five years now. It’s a capable machine that has done over 80 evolve mods and probably 100 deck cutouts in addition to a bazillion test runs and cuts in order to figure shit out. In fact i just replaced the brushes in the Dewalt 611 mounted to the z-axis a couple months ago. Very low maintenance, and not complicated to use at all.
Were you expecting it to just break after a while or something? It doesn’t seem to be doing that.
Veneer softener. Its a liquid you brush into wood veneer to make it more flexible. If you’re doing weird angles and unfriendly bend radii then you want it to prevent splitting.
Makes sense. I’m sure I’ll need some when I finally get my cnc built.
Btw…how much did you actually have to change in your x carve to Mod it to its current size. I have to make a plan b just in case my MPCNC turns out to be trash and I can only carve parallelograms
Originally i bought the larger x-carve which was more expensive. In hindsight i would have bought the one with the smaller workspace because its less expensive and i was going to do the following to it anyway:
replaced the 3’ y axis maker rails with 5’ y axis maker rails.
chopped the 3’ x-axis maker rails down to 2.5’
replaced the wasteboard with a fresh sheet of MDF and mounted that onto a 5/8" sheet of serious business cabinet grade plywood.
ran a 1" flat bottom router bit across the entire work area to level it.
set the whole thing on a drawer cart so i could roll it around.
I did nothing to the hardware, and (get your popcorn) i’m still using the Easel web based software because i haven’t dropped the cash on an Acorn kit yet and when i do i’ll have to learn allll new software and ain’t nobody got time for that when i can do things like this still:
Maker rails are just one type of aluminum extrusion. You may be able to find that exact extrusion elsewhere, but it does need to be exact. It not only has the belt surface for the flat belts but also the angled edge for the v-wheels on the carriages as well as the bolt holes for the end plates.
@Halbj613 I’ve had really good luck with my Shapeoko 3. It’s very similar to the x-carve but has custom extrusions that are more rigid. I mill a lot of aluminum without troubles and it cuts wood like butter. Their large model is $1600 with a 33X33 inch bed if that’s large enough for your needs. Unfortunately since they are custom extrusions and not maker-slide you can’t make it larger then that.
That was one reason i opted not to go with shapeoko at the time. maker rails can be easily attained, although they are a bit over priced.
Also i think i read somewhere that shapeoko was started by the guy that did x-carve originally or something along those lines. not 100% clear on all of that, but there is a relationship there somewhere.
i plan on buying a shapeoko for aluminum stuff this year. I first have to find a home for it. At the moment jake is consuming half of my garage with his giant fucking monster boards, which are important for testing new things from people.
edit: forgot to mention that i contacted shapeoko last year regarding custom rails, can confirm that they not only are not available, they will not customize them for you themselves, either. Real magicc would be designing your own carriages and end plates, using rails that will accommodate some heavy v-wheels, and essentially using your x-carve to make all the parts for a better more rigid machine. The step motors on the x-carve are solid, and the elctronics (an arduino with a daughter board) don’t care about working dimensions.
This is why I went with making the MPCNC, I can make it any size I want, just have to use dual endstops to square it up within the firmware. Only problem is that it’s using steel conduit, which isn’t the most ridid set up ever. As long as I can cut through wood, I’ll be happy, I’d just like to do more eventually
Not planning on buying one just thought that once you got good at it wouldn’t a cnc be easier cause you press a button And walk and walk off just like a 3d printer
if you could find some square tubing that would slide snugly into that steel conduit you’d probably have a very stiff rail indeed. Tubing is just the wrong geometry for lateral rigidity i would think. the aluminum extrusions are full of triangles.
That would probably work with the making frame but not the inside gantry movement, I think it would make it a bit too heavy. But I have a few small pieces left over from my cuts…time to go to the hardware store and shove things into the hole suggestively in front of the other customers
