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Looking to purchase a 1000mm Kit from Canada. Factoring in exchange and shipping this can get quite costly to get this machine to Canada. I wanted to get some advice from users who have already purchased. I want to know which items users feel I could just buy locally. I believe I can leave these items off the shopping cart. Any thoughts?
Drag Chain The drag chain kit comes with a mounting bracket, but has anyone had luck mounting with an alternative method? 58$ seems alot for plastic chain.
Motion Controller Is it possible to buy these separately? I know arduino’s are readily available to any country but im not sure about the board with the stepper drivers. Arduino’s are only 25$ and fans are quite cheap does that other board cost 90$?
Nema 23 Motors Found a local robot hobby shop to get these significantly lower price
Wasteboard The cost to ship this to canada is insane! lol
Spindle I can buy thise for half the price it takes to get it here.
Sorry to be a pain. I understand Inventables curates all of these items and needs to make money but, I trying to make the bill somewhat feasible.
Do you have more information sources for alternative controllers for the xcarve? I would like to know what that second board is? or where I can buy it separetly? I am not sure how comfortable I am using a different board and program and deal with the troubleshooting I assume it will come with.
I’m in the lower 48. LinuxCNC is a free CNC control software that has been around for a lot of years and is well proven to work well for CNC. The one thing you do need is a computer that has a parallel port but they are not to hard to find second hand. You also need a Break out Board (BoB) and 4 stepper drivers. These can be had for less that $100us.
There are folks on the forum that have set there machines up with this equipment and software that will help you with yours.
One thing about LinuxCNC is that it handles homing and limit switches with out any trouble. You can also use probing routines for setting you axis zeros and tool lengths.
There are also a lot of mods that can be done to the machine to improve the machine performance.
Where abouts in Canada? For various things I buy in the US I use a kinek point which gives me a us postal box and I just drive across to pick things up. Came in real handy picking up the dewalt 611. Costs a fortune up here…
I live close to the Niagara Falls border in Ontario. I do use a US mailbox to ship items to. I am trying to cut on duty charges aswell. Most of the items I mention above I think i can buy cheaper locally but my main question are with buying a drag chain online and being to mount it to the xcrave without their mounting bracket.
Also with the arduino board. What is the specific board with the stepper drivers? I can buy the Arduino, wiring and fan for under 35$cdn If i could find out what that board is I could save alot too. Their motion controller kit comes to about 160cdn and I think i could easily price it under 60$ buying separetly.
Hi Kyle. The shipping and exchange is costly but the way I look at it is if I purchased it in Canada it would cost more anyway, so the shipping is a necessary (shall I say) evil to owning one of these machines. You could source out some parts if you like, but I’m not so sure it would save you that much in the long run. But, then again you might. I would definitely do these things: cut and create your own MDF Waste board. That’ll save (big if its the 1000mm). Definitely get the Dewalt 611 Router locally. Its a great router and a great fit for the X-Carve. Inventables sell a 1/8 Collet, Nut, and Wrench Kit. Consider buying through them. I had lot of hassles trying to get one through other sources.I know one thing about Inventables Team from my experience. They really care about their product and you as a customer. I’m really pleased with how things are turning out with my X-Carve. It’s been good challenge and learning curve, but rewarding and fun. Just be sure to take your time, be comfortable with the decisions you make so you’ll be happy, and be patient with every aspect of this endeavor. The more patient I am the better things are turning out for me and I learned I need to do what seems right and best to me. At a friends suggestion I bought the Bosch Colt, even thought I wanted the Dewalt 611. Long story short, it was a disaster, so I got the Dewalt and everything I had problems with is turning out. So just be sure of your decisions and be patient during the whole process; from picking what you want to building and tweaking.
Hello Kyle,
I purchased a 1000mx1000m X-Carve to Canada in August. Shipping to the boarder saved me over $220 USD in shipping and duty was $85 . The difficulty I had at the border was what to classify the machine as for the paperwork. We ended up calling it an engraving machine. Inventables does not give countries of origin for parts in their packing slips, which may cause you some grief with the right agent.
The wasteboard was the most expensive item to ship (i wanted a working unit, so bought everything). You’ll save about $200cdn if you source locally. Milling the countersinks into the board may be the tough part. If you’re getting a router for it, buy a nice surface bit to flatten your wasteboard. Inventables has one for a decent price.
Then issue you’ll run into when buying items separate is you’ll be missing small items such as hardware and brackets.
The limit switch kit I got had all the hardware, but did not have brackets for the switches to bottom out on, which was interesting during my first homing sequence…
I did some quick searches on Stepper drivers and decided it wasnt worth hassle to source one locally. The Gshield or GRBL board works great however, TinyG also looks appealing.
It looks like you have all the big items pinned down. Unless you’re really trying to cut costs I think you’re there.
But in all seriousness, I agree. I had looked at sourcing a lot myself, but when it cam down to I was willing to pay a bit extra for the convenience of a full package and the support. I did opt out of the wasteboard, because like I’m sure everyone has noticed it’s a pretty expensive piece of MDF if you are outside the US.
For the drag Chain, you would have to make your own brackets unless @InventablesXcarve starts selling them separately. I found drag chain and other odds and end on AliExpress for pretty cheap, but there is a long wait time!
At the end of the day it comes down to how much do you want to spend vs. how much extra work do you want to do? Good luck in your endeavor!
