They are going to spend a lot on software. Adding GT2 belt to the board is interesting. I have so many questions though. How can you carve the end of a 6foot board without the whole thing tipping over? Are there planar wheels to hold the material down? Is there a physical connection with the gantry and the rollers to keep a consistent Z? How fast is it? What direction does it move? Does it get jammed with sawdust? Is there a limit to how much you can cut out (obviously cutting completely across won’t work, but do you need 20% left?)? How do you keep the board from rotating around Z?
Interesting idea though. Sort of like a low rider, if you just attach the board to some saw horses and let the machine drive back and forth.
I am not super confident it will work though. So I am saving my money. Besides, I have a CNC already. Also, it retails for $3900, if you believe them.
Seems to me like an inkjet printer or cricut overall architecture, so it would need to securely grip the workpiece to feed it in Y.
Looks like the workpiece belt is used as position feedback and not driven, so it doesn’t need a super strong mount, and the drive rollers operate as a closed loop servo drive.
I’m not sure how it maintains tracking. For single pass raster it might not matter (only slightly deform the product) but for 2D vector stuff the tracking can add up. Just ask @geodave.
Seems like it would need at least one flat side (or a sled) for the bottom, and not sure how flat the top needs to be.
For long pieces I would think infeed and outfeed roller supports would be needed.
Interesting concept.
What if you took the LR concept and had driven wheels instead of belts (like @geodave’s concept).
Then for Y position and tracking suppose you attached two GT2 belts to the workpiece, one along each edge. Then with encoders reading each belt with a toothed wheel, you could use position feedback to drive straight and with accurate Y distance. Still plenty of problems but maybe a similar concept. The main advantage I could see is that you can put it away on a shelf.
Is it just a retro fitted planer? Those do keep a good grip on flat material. Seems like if you start carving away too much though, you would get into trouble. I think I would need to use larger tabs than I do now or it would start pulling pieces out.
Super interesting, I see positives and negatives. I would love to take a closer look.
As I look closer at that video, it seems like they actually have a lot to figure out themselves. They didn’t show it actually milling once. The bottom looks like a belt from the belt printers, not a spoil board. So I’m not sure how that is going to work. All through cuts have to live on a sled?
Can’t answer the questions raised, but this appears to be a newer version of the CarveWright machine (aka Craftsman CompuCarve) that’s been around for at least a decade.
Al
Edit - I see carvewright’s in the Kickstarter link
It does seem to be a planer frame. Those bad boys can push a ton of material through. Think about a full width 1/8" deep cut. The power should be there, just not sure how you keep it tracking straight, and as material gets removed there is less holding power.
I think it probably excels at a few things and has serious issues with a few others. Like all machines really.
As mentioned earlier in the post, I think the Kickstarter is an updated version of the CarveWright (aka Craftsman CompuCarve). I think the attached review link answers some of the basic questions posed. Don’t know what the new version with the belt adds, but I’d guess it’s related to the addition of servo motors w/feedback (not mentioned in any of the earlier version stuff I saw).
A friend had a second gen Carvewright/ComuCarve…junk, he and I spent hours/days/weeks on it trying to get something usable. From lost stepping in the conveyor/gantry, to spindle flex shaft breaking, to the somewhat old CF card tech used for the files, a mess. Glad I didn’t use it as an example of CNC.
It finally got stolen out of his storage unit, actually was a relief. The only thing usable in the end was the ARTCAM software he bought for it