Carvera is now in full production, you can find further details here: bit.ly/Makera New review of the Carvera, setting up Fusion 360, Aluminium milling, feeds & speeds: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-XJTNLTiu_Xk.html
There are some very clever solutions engineered into this thing. The laser to observe whether a tool has sucessfully dropped in the tool holder is brilliant.
Since this video Carvera has improved the dust collection bin, added an external dust port, changed the Y axis linear shaft to 25mm, added an external estop switch, an x, y ,z probe, M8/M9 air flow control and a laser protection film.
This is a great project, which is well thought out. I hope it will come into production so that I can buy it one day. Now I only have one CNC 3018, but you just want more with your CNC. something professional. Great work!
i have a 3018, i was caving with it a bit then i put the laser on it and never touched the spindle again and its 18 months later. i would love to have a more pro machine like this one
starting the 3018 club here, but im planning to upgrading to a 5 axis 2.2kw spindle machine, though i will consider buying this thing too if it comes out and i find out
Thought this would be a nice upgrade for the 3018 I'm using now... Only thing I can think of missing is a5 the axis. Thx for this in depth review on making a complete product. But having to wait till August 2022 is way too long now.
by no means a cheap machine. but they seem to have cared for and solved all real world issues of software/safety/usability/reliability/precision/repeatability that a diy or semi-pro user may face. on it's own, this seems an amazing accomplishment. having used (aside from real cncs) carbide3D which is deep trash in every level, believe me, this seems like alien technology. excellent presentation and comment replying as well. company must thank you forever.
What an amazing robot! It looks like the price is reasonable too (as of this video). I saw a different machine that, compared to this, is super basic and it cost a lot more.
this covers a lot of snags new cnc operators run into..,. like automatically height probing and showing where the cut will take place , not to mention the atc with auto height setter.
Tool changer, 4th axis, dream machine 🤩. Well im gona finish my own some day. Just need to put in the Hours. The only bad part i can see is the tools not being in a box/drawer. Particles can easly lay ontop of tool. Or does it revers vacuum to clean them of..i think it does! Its nice to see a proper machine with metal, more metal and some cool add-ons included. Hum i wonder howlong until we start seing tool changing arms with air power toolchange (like a workshop cnc)
I am very very interested in buying one. I just hope that when they start selling them they are going to have different sizes of them. Really Great Project. Thank you for sharing...:)
It's difficult to tell from a video, but how would you rate the noise level when cutting aluminium and engineering plastics? My last machine, a Heiz 720, used a Kress 1050. It was a good machine but very noisy. Where I am now I need something much quieter. Really, I need more of a mill than a router but the cost of a CNC mill is too high. This machine might suit.
I love the project, just can't afford to lose 3k on whim of no real guarantee. It's absolutely amazing though. And If I could afford to taka a chance on it, I would.
Really nice machine - and beautifully reviewed. What type of plastic are you using (the black plastic) for the base? Do you have a specific name or grade of that material?
That's actually reasonable for a CNC with all these capabilities, Bantam offers a CNC desktop machine that does not include ATC or laser engraver and costs around 5k (or more, including the 4th axis attachment), and here you don't have to pay for silly software subsrciptions, if there were mor guarantees, I'd totally go for this one rather than the bantam tools' one
I haven't done much testing with Aluminium but from what I have seen it works well,. The tests were not that aggressive, so at this point I haven't any real idea how far it can be pushed.
It is not really that complex but It's quite tightly packed together. Hopefully they will sell spares. Most parts look pretty standard but the tool changer is a custom part.
@@techydiy I believe they're going to open an online shop after the campaign and sell parts and add-ons. Good to know most of it is standardised and replaceable, but I'm not surprised by the tool changer. It's always a trade off.
If the workpiece has a reflective edge and its thicker than about 50mm / 2", then when it is tool changing it will halt with an "ATC position occupied" error. If it is non reflective then its not detected. In practice its not a problem and a simple fix would be to put some tape on the material edge
Notice how the entire gantry/chassis is mobile and not fixed? Although it has dust collection there is no way that particles will not get in between that gap......unless they have boots that prevent it.
The 3K usd price range seems very low for this machine, I doubt they will pull it off. Not convinced that it will ever see production. Looks fine for companies, with high profits, but not sure if it will ever be affordable for the hobbyists. Also IMO some parts are very overbuilt, eg. the ballscrews are very oversized, not sure why they would use those; not convinced by the servo motors, you can have closed loop control with steppers, the super thick side sheets of the machine, and many makers have a problem with closed source firmware, it is a red flag for me for sure. The tool changer is really nice, at least.
I agree that 3k seems low, but I'm seeing a lot of off-the-shelf parts that added together don't seem far-fetched as a bill-of-materials for the machine. HOWEVER, I am unconvinced a company can make a sufficient profit margin off that price range. For such a niche product you'd expect them to shoot for at least a 15% profit margin, but I'd be surprised if they can manage 5%. Now, that might just be because it is discounted for its backers, but I'm not seeing much in the way of wiggle room for incidentals, like tariffs, supply chain breakdowns, the massive increase in shipping costs these days, and material shortages. For example, shipping container prices have increased tenfold from last year, there is an aluminum shortage in China spreading to the rest of the world, China is shutting down magnesium production for the winter due to power shortages, which impacts the production of aluminum alloys. China's biggest producer of bauxite (guinea) has had a regime change and is now more hostile to china, further threatening production. If the $3,000 price tage was from before these events transpired, then they will make a loss on every machine they sell or will be forced to delay, likely for over a year for prices to fall.
Odd that they don't have an option to get both the 4th axis AND the PCB kit. You have to pick one or the other. Presumably you can buy the option later through the backerkit but still...
It was one that came with the machine. Quite a nice quality, hard rubber/plastic roller. The other way I do it is put some acetate over the uv solder mask and flatten it with glass.
Because of the high speed spindle and lack of rigidity. For cutting steel, lower speed and higher torque spindle is required, and of course rigid machine to handle the torque.
@@techydiy Hahaha. Oh please. With a 200W toy grade spindle and all that chatter when cutting plastics? I most definitely can't. You may be able to ENGRAVE a steel part though.
nice machine i mean someone went ape shit with what you can do with an x y z. but i wonder if this is much faster... 20000 steps. to poop out an test pcb. :( well at least it can ! but the speed... the speed is awfull. might be the gcode but i recon it wastes allot of bits by going that slow :) a stepper can go higher speed then this one does :( this is servo !! come on. i can drill faster by hand :( nice review though. i wont buy it ! so you did your job ! a honest review ! and sowed all it can do, and i must say pretty advanced to say the least. but not for me :)
I think it cannot go a lot faster... The X/Y/Z can, of course, but not when cutting, because the 200W spindle just don't have enough torque to do the cut at higher speeds. In fact, it's not even cutting at that feed, it's rather "grinding" :D 200W spindle is just for "playing around"... BTW, for that price I made a really big machine, with big X/Y/Z motors and water cooled big spindle, that's cutting aluminium like butter...
i'm a cnc setter operator, it would be much much better if the machine had a setup routine where is touched off the tools at the start of the job, totally pointless and time waste having it touch off every time it picks a tool.
Thought the same but i guess it does it for precision, this machine has no precise V holders (BT30 etc) so z height/tool offset in every tool may change. By re-measuring, this issue vanishes. Pretty clever. It would be perfect if they had option to store Z-offsets as you say and bypass probing in jobs that need no real z accuracy (ie. roughing). But how much time would you save? Not much, and precision would suffer.
@@constantinosschinas4503 There's the possibility of chips getting deposited on top of the index rings on each tool which would affect Z-axis repeatability -- in "real" CNC the toolchanger and its tools are shielded from the working area so Z-offsets for each tool can be persistent between toolchanges with some confidence in accuracy. I'd like to see a partition between the work area and the tool storage area to stop waste materials from cutting getting into that space -- even a flexible curtain would help stop most contamination. The tool spindle and tools enter and leave the tool storage area in the same path each time as far as I can see, after touching off on the Z-axis height sensor. The partition would need to be dismounted to allow for replacement tools for different operations or in case of wear or breakage, but that's a minor task during setup. It would be easy for an owner to add a homebrew screen like this after purchase.
It's a bit of a... Meh.. There is no use of this one in a hobby scene... they try to do something "new" but its just different... Its all about time between closing the lid/door, and opening it again... If you look at that... its pretty easy to see what is worth going on or not..
Where's the unique tool changer part? Direct clamping and linear magazines have been around for decades, that's pretty basic. Am I missing something substantial?
Lot of room for optimization. Why measure the length of the touch off probe when that is essentially its job, in fact, why measure anything twice when it is the same tool.
If you follow the tutorials closely, then you will be able to produce what is in the video without any real problems. Creating your own designs is a whole new challenge, but as long as you start with simple stuff and forgiving materials then its not that difficult.
Cool machine. I wouldn't be using the laser tool without protective hood on machine and eye wear. Being blinded with science makes for a good song but not in real life.
That tail stock thread being cut the wrong way is a definite NO for me. Everything else could be perfect but watching Naomi wu get it wrong due to muscle memory was a deal breaker. Not sure why I'm watching this in that case. They should fix that.
You are presumably talking about cutting the fr4 pcb. Fr4 fibreglass is a tough material to cut accurately . Obviously when it comes to the plastics and aluminium then it cuts larger chips.
