diyElements: Need community feedback please

X-Carve
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Hello Inventables Community!

My name’s Dave, self-appointed evangelist for a rural, non-profit learning center my friend Lou & I co-founded a few years ago. We play on the side of STEM we like to call ‘Mechatronics’, de-mystifying how things work & encouraging making things.

Out of an email conversation, Zach Kaplan, CEO of Inventables, encouraged me to post the new & pretty cool to us product family ‘before’ prototyping, giving all of you an opportunity to share your ideas, experience & contribute to creating something useful for others.

A place for things & everything in it’s place. We’ve made all manner of structures to hold our tools & projects, using tree parts, metal parts, commercial products, kee klamps, speed-rail, welded, bolted, you-name-it.

Then we found a very well thought out industrial product from the ‘Lean Thinking Methodology’ and said ‘ahha!’. Plastic coated pipe & shiny fittings, strong enough to hold several hundred pounds on a shelf or work surface.

It has a unique advantage, it is ‘easy’ to fabricate any structure you need or want. It is ‘easy’ to change the structure, add, adjust or remove parts without taking the whole thing apart.

Working with the product, our thought is to create a kit of pre-cut lengths that make it fast & easy to fabricate & tune your vision for a workspace. Like an erector set for the diy community. Golden ratio proportions in several delicious colors, adaptable to almost any need, affordable.

It’s being used for 3D printer stands, would make your X-Carve look very professional & also provide an exoskeleton to support cooling, vacuum, lights & more. Easily add wheels, doors, wiring clips, accessory clips, hooks, part & tool storage.

We’re just starting to use Fusion 360, we do have some useful step files and we’re very open to your ideas & participation. We’re lifelong fans of electronics, Louie holds a few patents, we’ve learned a lot from the care & feeding of our cnc mill, we have a very cool RPi based digital signage app if you do expos, poster sessions, etc. (and you can fabricate your booth & transport containers from these diyElements). I’m working on a 1500 watt portable power pack, eBike or a week in the woods.

What do you want to make?

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@DaveStrait mentioned he was interested in making accessories for X-Carve that Inventables has not made. Anyone have any requests for what you’d like to see him make?

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First thing off the top of my head? A dust collector foot! I’d love to have one of those bristly-brush-shroud components that you see on a lot of larger CNC routers that I can hook up to my shop vac to keep the dust contained. :smile:

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I second the dust collector, however I think alot of people will make there own seeing as there is a very nice how to for the shapeokos.

How about tool/end mill stands/holders?
You could incorperate a laptop/monitor stand into the xcarve base you’re talking about?
Maybe even make some of the xcarve components in different colours if people want to change the appearance of the machine.

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I like the ideas @DanBrownand @JamiePhillips have posted. To add to them, I wonder if there is a market for some sort of “turnkey” X-Carve station. Something that people could order in a similar fashion to how they order the X-Carve and it would be tailored specifically for it. I’m thinking like a whole kit that people could put together.

A list of custom options could be something like the following (each could be bought separately or left off of an order):

  • Table/Stand with custom dimensions to fit the X-Carve
  • Enclosure that could have sound dampening or plexi windows added
  • Organizational system for under table storage
  • Under Table dust extractor/shop vac holder
  • a recommended shop vac could be sold
  • relay and timer functions could
    be added
  • tubing for dust extraction
  • dust shoe and tubing connection
  • e-stop mount
  • computer drawer/shelf
  • bit/repair tool storage under table
  • Castors or not

The list could go on but you get the picture.

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This is Great! Our cnc mill came from an industrial environment with a super heavy duty stand & plexiglass enclosure. I’m sure it cost $$$$, $100 each OSHA sealed safety interlocks, the works. And they ‘forgot’ lots of useful features . . .

If anyone wants to do a ‘napkin sketch’ I think we can get it to a prototype w/pictures pretty quickly & then tune it . . .