Got my Solidoodle Antique back up and running with a new PSU and borosilicate glass bed recently (also bought the E3D v6 but wanted to wait before swapping into it, make sure everything was right with the new PSU and that I had all needed parts printed before gutting the current extruder assy), plan to use it to print several Xcarve addons (dust shoe, maybe pulley and vwheel covers and the like) but holding off for a) my fix to whatever is currently ailing it and b) upgrade from the 24v stock spindle to the Dewalt 611.

FWIW my review of the Xcarve would actually be excellent despite my startup trouble.  The kit parts -- shipping and organization -- are great.  The instructions thorough with a very active enthusiastic community adding further support on their forums.  There have been issues with the 24V spindles that they've been very proactive about replacing for customers, and have switched their new default to the DW611 to avoid that problem altogether.  They're also prototyping a much stronger controller assembly that gets away from some of the grbl issues but it's pricey.  I don't think I'll be working at a level to justify that myself.

I made a small writeup with pictures on the Shapeoko forum, if anybody is interested: http://www.shapeoko.com/forum/viewtopic … a2dccc491f

Milling is much more different from 3D printing than I expected... The things you can do are very different, it's bigger, it's louder, it's messier... And also faster and in a way more satisfying.

I feel bad because I've been neglecting my Solidoodle though

Revolve3D wrote:

The metal shavings that are produced can be picked up with a dust shoe vac normally.

I will be the first to admit that i don't know about the Shapeoko / hobby mill department (my shapeoko 2 has never worked and is still just mechanically functional. Want to build an enclosure for the electronics and got distracted a year and a half ago when I bought the thing), but I used to work on CNC routers and we always cautioned customers to not use a dust collector for aluminum chips unless you were using it exclusively for aluminum chips. If your hopper is full of MDF, wood, and plastic dust, the hot chips from metal cutting could start a fire.

At the very least I'd make sure to double check that you've emptied your vac before switching to metal. Better safe than sorry!

I agree to the better safe then sorry comment. Why risk starting a fire when a simple emptying of the vac can prevent this. To be honest it didn't even cross my mind so thats just 1 more think I now know to make machining safer so thank you.  I could see this being a problem with commercial machines. The chips from my Velox CNC can be quite warm. This isn't really the case with the shapeoko in my experience at least. At .2mm DOC it produces aluminum dust not chips which doesn't really pull heat away from the tool as much as larger chips do. When I used my shapeoko I would also spray a bit of WD 40.

You are correct though and a cyclonic separator should also be used when vacuuming metal to extend the life of the filter.

The metal shavings that are produced can be picked up with a dust shoe vac normally.

I will be the first to admit that i don't know about the Shapeoko / hobby mill department (my shapeoko 2 has never worked and is still just mechanically functional. Want to build an enclosure for the electronics and got distracted a year and a half ago when I bought the thing), but I used to work on CNC routers and we always cautioned customers to not use a dust collector for aluminum chips unless you were using it exclusively for aluminum chips. If your hopper is full of MDF, wood, and plastic dust, the hot chips from metal cutting could start a fire.

At the very least I'd make sure to double check that you've emptied your vac before switching to metal. Better safe than sorry!

While you may want to build a full enclosure what you really need is a dust shoe. I have a shapeoko 1 with all the upgrades. When cutting metal you will probably use .2mm-.25mm depth per pass. The metal shavings that are produced can be picked up with a dust shoe vac normally. You also want to keep the rails clear of metal shavings so this helps more then a case. With my larger industrial style CNC I do passes of 1.5mm with a 1/4" roughing bit and it sprays metal everywhere(due mainly to the mist coolant system), way worse then my shapeoko ever was.

Control Software- I have used Universal Gcode sender with my shapeoko. It works well most of the time. I have a dedicated Mach3 computer for my other CNC and it does cost money but its worth it if you intend to use the machine a lot.

CAM software depends on the type of machining you intend to do. I do a lot of 2.5D cutting and use Cambam. Cambam can accept .stl files also. I have read about better programs for 3D milling though but all cost money. I only have Cambam for now.

OpenSCAM is a free gcode simulator that has worked great for me.

And of course you'll need the right flavor of G-code sending capability.

CAM:

http://www.deskproto.com/products/entry-ed.php ($150ish)
http://www.grzsoftware.com/ (MeshCAM - also on Inventables site $250).  Fairly highly regarded for ease of use.
Bobcad - bad reviews, poor customer treatment stories about, but $250ish seems like starting price.
http://www.artcam.com/express/index.asp $194 - might be a bit too limited.  Next edition leaps to stratospheric $1500ish
http://sites.fastspring.com/hexray/product/cambam $150
Autodesk Fusion 360 - supposedly 'free' 1 year for student/hobby non-commercial use, some question if that's still true
Several options exist for CAM integration out of Solidworks if someone already has that
...and if I really want to hurt myself, Skeinforge slicer has Mill modules....no idea how finished/functional. ;-)

Machine control:
http://www.machsupport.com/software/mach3/ $175 ouch
"Universal G-code Sender" - freeware??

For doodling/testing perhaps:
http://www.simplecnc.com/
http://openscam.com/

Yeah it looks like software for CNC is a bit different, even though I'm quire relieved to see that it's generally more simple than the 3D printing software. I'm also looking around, but not too actively, at the beginning I guess I'll use printrun or something similar. I'll be happy just to get the d..n thing assembled

Have a worktable built for it in the garage and a list of projects (small things to start out and dial it in).  Need to start on a hinged-cover box for chip containment if I want to do metal but figured that can wait until the unit is actually delivered and assembled. 

Now researching all the software options.  Crap, CNC CAM is a whole new can of worms ain't it?

The X-Carve seems really nice as well. The GCode-controlled spindle is nice and I definitely like the ACME z-axis. But I'm a bit concerned about the 1m long makerslides... Many people that modded the SO2 to such length found problems in rigidity and had to put two extrusions.

I am anyway planning to implement a PID control for my spindle (DIY rather than SuperPID), and hopefully the board will be able to interface with that. I already bought the components, it doesn't seem too complicated to make.