Affordable and Easy to Use CNC Machine

(image courtesy of www.carvewright.com)
The world of CNC machining has changed into a more personalized and home-based approach with the advent of the CarveWright. The CarveWright is about the size of a printer and is the most affordable and usable CNC machine for the average person. In fact using the CarveWright is almost as easy as sending a file to a printer, except you just send it to your CarveWright and have it etch away your designs on wood. For more information, please visit the official CarveWright website at
http://www.carvewright.com/

The CarveWright machine can produce intricate designs on wood, plastics, and other materials that are similar in softness. There is a video on YouTube who has a bigger CNC machine and has programmed it to make 6 country-shaped bowls out of a big piece of wood. He would then sell each bowl for $20 at the flee market, making a large amount of money in profit. The beautiful thing about CNC machines is that they pretty much do all of the work for you. Once you have designed a program you just tell the machine to start carving, and it will do the rest. If you want one item, or a thousand, it makes no difference to a CNC machine. Just bear in mind that it is a mechanical machine, and like every mechanical machine, it will breakdown and need maintenance. The costs to maintain a larger cnc machine is usually not cheap, and I wouldn't think that repairing the CarveWright after it's warranty period would be cheap either. Just some food for thought, why is the CarveWright warranty only, "one year or 200 hours"? What that says to me is that the manufacturer cannot guarantee that the device will function after 200hours. Here is what the carvewright website has to say about warranty:

The CarveWright warranty covers parts and labor for one full year or 200 hours
of cutting. The warranty excludes consumable items such as bits, sandpaper drive
belts, and flexshafts. The machine tracks cutting time for this purpose.
Shipping costs are not covered under the warranty. Our service center is located
in Houston, TX. There is a 30-day return period after which no returns are
accepted. There is also a restocking fee for returned machines. The warranty
does not cover commercial or industrial use. -http://www.carvewright.com/warranty.html

The software that comes with the CarveWright is also extremely simple to use, and can be used by the most novice user of computers. The bigger CNC machines used in industry-type work is programmed using complex programs that require schooling and training to use them. The CarveWright makes carving a project as simple as importing a JPEG into the CarveWright program, for example, a JPEG image of your house, and then clicking a few buttons to save it to the CarveWright memory card, which is then transferred to the CarveWright machine, where the CarveWright will carve out your house into a 3D work on wood based on greyscale computations of the JPEG that correlate with depth of carving or similar computational mechanisms.

To see images of items made using the CarveWright, visit the links below.
http://carvewright.com/results.html
http://carvewright.com/gallery/gallery.php

There is a forum on the CarveWright website if you want more information or want to post questions/comments there.

I definetely think that the CarveWright is an innovative and useful device for those who make signs, do sculpting, modeling, and the like.

Price:
1899.99 USD (http://www.carvewright.com/)
1899.99 USD (http://www.sears.com/)
Note: Sears is selling the CarveWright on sale for $1699.99, and the offer expires on Oct 10th 2007.

Be sure to bookmark our Savings and Discounts page.

It is better to buy the CarveWright from Sears or another store because they will often put the CarveWright on sale, for e.g. free shipping, or a certain percentage price reduction.


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This is a CNC gift item that I made using a larger CNC machine. The item was made made out of plexiglas. I got the edges to be so smooth by using varying grades of sand paper and then a mechanical buffer for the shine. If you do not have plexiglas, lexan should produce similar results.