So I am picking up an x-carve from a guy I know in a week or two, It is one of the original ones and has a different controller than what comes with them now. Will be a 750mm x 750mm to start. Couple of questions I have is there will be no waste board, and I cringe at what shipping will be if I order one up. Am I good to make my own? He has a performax spindle on there now as well which I’m not a fan of and am going back and forth between the Makita and the DeWalt, which do you prefer and why? Is one better than the other or more personal preference than anything? Don’t care for his spindle mount either and am looking at either getting one from inventables or I have my eye on some on ebay as well. Thoughts? Any other tips, and suggestions welcome as well.
I made my own with a piece of birch plywood from lowes. I also added more extrusion to support it. I had that here from the Shapeoko days. I put 1/4-20 inserts in every 6 inches. In retrospect, every 4 would have been better. I have the Inventables/ Dewalt and although it is noisy, has been problem free. Mine started out as a Shapeoko2 and I’ve added Yaxis stiffeners, 9mm belts/pulleys, and a cnc4newbies Z axis. Those upgrades made it a whole new machine. The X controller is a nice addition.
Your weak link is the old controller which is basically an Arduino UNO with a gshield (integrated 3 stepper drivers)
This means the Y-axis with two steppers need to share one driver (effectively giving each motor 50% of the power)
If I were to suggest one thing to change is to buy/make a better controller.
Get 4x TB6600 stepper drivers and a 36V PSU, use the existing UNO and you have a massive power upgrade that will pay it self back due to increased reliability (much less chance of loosing steps)
I\d also consider upping the belts, as they are old they might not be that fresh anymore.
I have the Makita, its very capable, the single fact that the minimum RPM = 10k would make me choose that one any day over the Dewalt.
Dewalt is good, dont get me wrong, but it just dont have that minimum RPM-range.
The controller is an upgraded controller. This doesn’t have he x-controller and I will be working with V-carve pro and then Mach 3. I don’t have the exact controller name right now but here is a picture on what it looks like:
I am leaning towards the Makita as well for the lowend RPM.