what do you think about the compucarve?

I have been toying with that tool as well. It sure would make some nice accent pieces. I just saw an infomercial for another machine (I forgot the name) similair to the Craftsman one. The work they do for the woodworker looks great. I wonder how long the bits last. Thanks for this topic Dave!

-- "Knowledge is King! It is never too late to learn something new." - Jim

send cajunpen a question. he’s got one

-- ..... art for lifes sake ... danwalters@lumberjocks.com

While I do not have one a good friend does. He carved a few rosettes in pine as practice then he scanned in a picture of his dog.
I know that there are 12 bits, but he only has two, so far.
I was blown away by the detail it was able to do with the picture of his dog! Even had a 3D effect.
Unfortunately one of the axis’ “broke” and he had to send it back to be repaired after only three days. We’ll see what happens when he gets it back.
It takes about 40 minutes to carve a 4”x 8” area.

Carving is not my cup of tea but I was very impressed by the detail. Still requires LOTS of sanding.

-- No piece is cut too short. It was meant for a smaller project.

The other one is the Carvewright n01 system. www.carvewright.com

-- Hope Never fails

Carveright makes the compucarve for Sears. It’s the same machine Sears just renamed it.

It looks nice, but the thing I don’t like about it is that is cuts in a raster fashion.
Raster basically “scans” the entire workpiece so carving a simple circle or a complex
pattern of the same size will take the same amount of time.

You can probably make a jig and cut a circle faster then the machine.

Still, it’s pretty nice.

-- Gary, East TX -- The longest journey begins with a single step.

I saw the Carveright in action at a woodworking show. I talked to the rep and GaryK is right, it’s the same machine as the Craftsman. Be prepared though, IT”S LOUD. You could hear that thing running from the other end of the show. Also, I recently read a review on it and I guess there are different levels of detail you can choose and if you want really fine detail on a piece, it could potentially run all day. Hope that helps.

-- Tony, Ohio

The thing allot of people don’t understand about this machine…it does way more than just carving and 3D stuff. You could use it to cut complex curved pieces, joinery of all types, even as a precision drilling machine. Ya, the setup time for simple tasks might inhibit its use for some operations, and it’s price certainly is a substantial factor to weigh against the machines real usefulness….but I think it’s a pretty cool way for a regular Joe to get involved in CNC!

-- Women love me.....trees fear me

David, you are absolutely right regarding the cost! i was playing with ebay and there are some listed that are supposedly still in the box for a little over half the cost of one from sears. i really dont trust all of the namebrands that are all that inexpensive from ebay as they could very well be china knockoffs.

actually i am going to sell my old gmc pickup so i will be able to get the machine with all the bells and whistles.

regards
dave

i saw a review on it and it says that it does get the good detail bit it is a pretty rough cut and requires a lot of finishing work to get it nice and smooth in the commercials they probably use a fresh bit so it cuts better but after a few cuts it starts to get a rougher cut.

Here is a video on the Sears version

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHzKJ3yQ0jU

And there was a video on the Compucarve right neat this one.

Lee

-- No piece is cut too short. It was meant for a smaller project.

I don’t think I’d use one enough to justify the expense. The repeatability of pieces is what would sell it to me.

-- Maplewood, MN

I don’t know about this. For some reason I feel like it is automating one more aspect of an art that we should be learning more about rather than getting another new machine to do the hard work for us. But that is just an initial reaction.

I’m obviously not a truly experienced woodworker so much of what I see in the world is just on the surface. This product seems to me to be similar to the long lasting argument of machined vs. hand cut dovetails. Maybe in the short run if you are doing one piece a machine like this doesn’t really make any sense. However, if you are planning on making many copies of the same work, then this is your huckleberry (so to speak).

For me, I’m going to keep working on green wood working (meaning electricity free). Now, I just need to learn how to sharpen worth a damn.

~DB

-- Happy Ripping!!!

I’d love to have one of these but wouldn’t use it enough to justify the cost. I might make a couple useful items, then I’d just play with it to see what it could do. However if it does complex cuts, drilling and especially the joinery, that would be more useful to me. The combination of this with the detailed carving would make it a little more realistic to add to the shop.

I haven’t seen much mention of the cutting and joinery, they always play up the carving part of the tool.

Maybe somebody who has one could post us a nice review???

-- Tim D. - Woodstock, GA

Well like a lot of the others here, I think it might be a lot of fun playing around with this machine. It is a bit costly, and I’m not sure I would use it enough to make it worth while. But it would be fun to play with one for a bit, maybe I would be surprised and find more uses for it than I think. Like another said, cheap way to get into CNC….... But as far as I know at this point, it is not yet available in Canada, so it’s a decision I won’t have to make. :-)

-- Brian's Table Top Toys http://home.mountaincable.net/~bgraham/

It is technically a CNC but you can’t program it like you would a CNC with G code.

It’s more like a 3D printer. It cuts (prints) from right to left, then moves down a little bit then back to the left.
So on and so on until it’s done. It might take 20 minutes to cut a circle, where a true CNC would
take about 5 seconds.

You take the good with the bad.

If you want a real CNC try: http://www.hobbycnc.com/

You can build one for about $500.

There is a member here who has done it.

Check out: http://lumberjocks.com/jocks/SPalm/blog/2271

-- Gary, East TX -- The longest journey begins with a single step.

I happened to be at Rockler today and ran across

http://www.nextwaveautomation.com/

It looks far sturdier than does the CompuCarve.

The detail on what was in the display in the store was more precise than what I saw my friends CompuCarve do.

If automated carving is your goal at $2295 the price differential is not that great.

Lee

-- No piece is cut too short. It was meant for a smaller project.

Lee – Do you know if it raster cuts like the compucarve or cuts point to point?

-- Gary, East TX -- The longest journey begins with a single step.

Nope. Don’t know. What was displayed was a piece of plywood that had words and designs (borders) carved in it.

The website says it uses G code and has a download.

Lee

-- No piece is cut too short. It was meant for a smaller project.

I looked out of curiosity at CompuCarve reviews on the web some months back. While everybody agrees that it can do neat stuff, the machine is notoriously unreliable. Some people reported not being able to use it more than couple of weeks in a row and sending it to the manufacturer to be fixed more than 5 times. For production work it seems to be inadequate (because of reliability issues) and for hobby work it is way too expensive.

With respect to producing “nice stuff”, machine carving is not very sought after. While the details can be impressive, it will still not look like a hand made carving. Since a carving would increase the value of a piece only if it is well done (otherwise the piece looks worse), I see no reason to use a machine like that for my work unless it is used for rough carving. I can “rough carve” with a router faster though and it is way cheaper.

As GaryK suggests, you can probably use it for joinery but I do not think the precision is good enough. Also, the speed seems to be abysmal (I bet I can cut dovetails by hand faster than making them with this machine).

Due to reliability issues, I would not buy this machine until I hear 1 year worth of good reviews from people that own the machine.

Alin

-- -- Alin Dobra, Gainesville, Florida

Rockler carries a cnc machine now … looks like a fun one.

-- ..... art for lifes sake ... danwalters@lumberjocks.com

i suppose i am not the most observant man in the country and group. but i did not know there were so many manufacturers of cnc units! from the ones mentioned above to the do-it-yourself build units. there are just so many possibilities now to choose from.
regards
dave

Good idea but poor implementation. No big deal to build your own CNC and a lot of fun. I built my own CNC version of the Legacy but will do columns up to 20” by 10’. You can expect at least .01” accuracy with a home built machine. More details on my site.

-- Art Ransom www.turningaround.org