- Inside this crate is a
Carvera desktop CNC mill that can mill PCBs, aluminum
and all sorts of good things. I've been really excited
to check this out. Let's get to cracking it open. (ambient music)
(hammer thuds) Just to be clear, Makera sent me this unit for free to review. (ambient music continues) Wow, that's pretty sweet. (ambient music continues)
(plastic clacks) (computer thuds) Oh, it's pretty glorious. We dig it. Manual acquired and
the next step is indeed to take these out and
I got some more light. I love having a T handle set by the way. There we go. Accessories, power cable. Tool preparation, for
wireless pro tool one manual tool setter, spare eighth inch bit collar, alan wrench and backup screws. Phone, iPad holder, spare
tool bits, spare dust filter, laser goggles, safety
goggles, and an ESTOP button. Tool kits. Is this the bits that I'm
supposed to be loading? Yep, this is an 8th inch, 30
degree 0.2 millimeter vbit. That goes there. Charge the wireless probe. After the device is turned on, the yellow indicator light will light up as the wireless probe
automatically starts charging. Oh, there we go. You stop. Imagine with a connector like that, I'm gonna be able to
figure out where that goes. I guess let's jump into software. I have the Carvera controller installed here on my laptop connected via USB. It came with this examples guide and they have some
different projects to try. So the first one is this LED light, which has like a bunch
of different pieces. We need single-sided PCB, MDF waste board. I bet this is our waste board. Cut 2 millimeter MDF
with a size of 150 x 100 as the waste board. (saw whirs) This barely fits under there, okay. (saw whirs) This is just a sacrificial board so that when we drill holes in this it doesn't drill into the main bed here. Need a setup like this
to fixture it in there. I have not done a lot of CNC milling but my understanding is that work holding and the thing you're doing the work on, down to the bed is of vital importance. Now let's open a file. Set working coordinate to x offset 15. Check the scan margin, check
the auto Z probe option. 5 points, 5 points and a height of 2. And then click run. All right, I imagine
we have to close this. It's doing a thing. All right, this is our
laser wireless probe or wireless probe not laser. Dead or not set. I think we need to connect
the wireless probe. Oh, let's stop this. Something like that. I think I found what I was missing. You have to pair the wireless probe. Press the wireless probe until the green light blinks quickly. There we go. Okay, let's try this again. (machine whirs) Yes, okay, that worked. Let's give this another shot. Okay, so this is probing the top of the circuit board, the PCB, so that it doesn't have
to be completely flat. It can have a little bit of variation and the machine will adjust accordingly. Now we're switching to the vbit. (machine whirs) Looks right, hey! (hand claps) (ambient music continues) (ambient music continues) Now, we apply the UV solder mask. We're gonna have to vacuum
up some of this dust. (vacuum whirs) Use the sanding block in the
accessory kit to polish this. (ambient music continues) A little bit there, a little bit there. That's looking pretty good. And then, cure it with a UV carrea lamp. So we'll set up to five minutes. All right, not quite cured yet. I'll give it 15 minutes. I don't know. So I'm not sure that was recording but solder mask is cured. I'm now running the solder master removal. (ambient music continues) Right, we gotta drill. (ambient music continues) Looks like it's about done. It's just doing the final
routing on the edges. The dust collection isn't
doing great on this. Let me vacuum it up. That looks pretty awesome. It intentionally left tabs here but you can see big huge portions didn't get all the way ratted through, so I'm gonna have to cut those. Okay, not the most even
solder master job on my part but not terrible either. I think it'll work. Let's move on to the next piece
of their sort of examples. It's the base of the stand and it's made out of EBS. And so we need our waste board and then EBS plastic board 150 x 150. All right, waste board cut. These guys all sort of
hanging off the sides here. Oh, and then two bolts. There is a different L bracket. (tool clanks) (plastic crackles) (ambient music) (machine whooshes) (ambient music continues)
(machine whooshes) (vacuum whirs) Not bad, so it's got tabs. We'll have to cut through those. (tool clicks) Here we go. Could have a little bit better
finish on it, but again, I think that's the CAM program
as much as anything else. Yeah, that is not too shabby. Next we make the acrylic sign plate here. All right, I'm gonna go cut this. All right, there we go. We have Spider-Man, R2D2, a
face, Carvera, or balloon. We're gonna go with R2D2, run. (ambient music) (ambient music continues) (vacuum whirs) Not shabby at all. Yep, there we go. That looks pretty sweet. The last step is aluminum some sort of touch switch button deal and of course we need more waste board. The aluminum file loaded, run. (machine whines) (vacuum whirs) That looks really good. I'm excited about that but I gotta figure out
how to get these tabs off. Use the hand saw to remove the tabs, okay (metal crackles) (saw crackles) There we go. Let's assemble this thing. They give you a kit, it includes an already soldered board. Say you can either use that or use as reference to where
to place the component. So I'm just gonna do that. Got my nice little
circuit board vice here. We'll just work our way in here. (soft lo-fi music) We have a 0 ohm resistor. This is basically just a wire regardless. (soft lo-fi music continues) And an LED and they do have a flat side. (soft lo-fi music continues) These four are the same
all for the LEDs, I bet. (soft lo-fi music continues) It's this way. (soft lo-fi music continues) A cap here. (soft lo-fi music continues) Oh, let's put the IC in. Two more caps it fits right there. Its got one more little thing, which is this little wire here. This wire is actually a contact for the aluminum button. There we go. Button goes in here and
they say to glue it, but I'm gonna assemble
without gluing it first. Oh dear, that needs to lay flat. Let's see if I can
extract it a little bit. That'll work. Here's the button and I think this is just
capacitive touch button. That goes there. (screwdriver clicks) That button does stay in on its own now. I don't think we need glue. Piece of acrylic which just
sits in there (laughs) nothing. Let me try this with a normal charger rather than this fancy occi
power delivery charger. There we go. Yep, that was it. Okay, that's pretty neat. That is a really fun first project to show off what this
machine is capable of and get you sort of
acclimated to using it. And it would be really easy
to make a new one of these. Maybe we need a Strange Parts logo. I wanna do one more thing, which is I want to try out the 2.5 watt laser on this. It's just a quick raster engraving on MDF waste board. I'm gonna go cut this. I'll be right back. All right, 120 millimeters x 100. I'm gonna mount that in there. It looks like the laser also takes G code, which is interesting. That is the one thing there
isn't much documentation on yet is how to generate G code for this. Check the configuration and then hit run. Now they did give me some safety glasses I'm not terribly opposed to wearing, partly because they're so stylish. I can't see crap in these. They're really dark. All right, run. I think this laser might be screwed up. I think I figured it out. Manuel says there is a
protective cover over the laser. Well, let's restart this. Oh, that looks a lot better. It's doing the laser thing. It is burning wood. It's what we wanna see. (ambient music) (ambient music continues) Woo smokey, that looks pretty good. Not bad at all. I mean, I think if you want a laser cutter buy a laser cutter but for one-off kind of
engraving type tasks, this will work. Well, I think that does it for my unboxing and first use here. I'm very eager to dive into this and try it with more stuff. Based on my use thus far, this is a really well built machine. It's been very easy to get up and running. Most of the problems I've
had have been my failure to read the instructions properly. I wanted to give a few updates
after having used this. I guess it's been a couple weeks since I recorded the first part. The enclosure is fantastic. I'm just really, really, really
appreciating the enclosure. I could totally run this
in like an apartment. It's not even half as noisy as running your vacuum cleaner and it does a really good job in terms of like keeping
the dust on the inside. This fixturing kit I'm just using this a ton and I love it. It's perfect for a lot
of what I want to do. The controller software,
now that I'm used to it it doesn't have a lot
of English labels on it, it just has pictures. But now that I'm used to
it, it's really solid. The dust collection, I
know early on I was like, "Hmm, maybe it's so, so." I've been cutting white delrin in here which is plastic and like it's
definitely collecting stuff but it's also not collecting stuff. As you can see, it sort
of coats everything like a freaking snow globe. I would like to have
better like, I don't know like the shop bots and
things have shoes on them with like black fibers which really come down
and sort of nestle in among where you're cutting and they seem to pick up a lot more dust. This one's like this flexible rubber. It's so, so. It has this sort of
spring loaded mechanism, which again, I kind of would like it to be a little different. I found it really hard to open this and I still don't quite
know how to do it reliably. I guess you just pull. But this filter started to plug
up with little aluminum bits and I need to figure
out how to change that. The things that I'd like to
see improve, that's one of 'em. They just posted machine profiles for a whole bunch of different CAD Cam software Fusion 360, V Carve, and like a handful of other things. So that's awesome. What I will say is if you
haven't used a mill before, it's not as plug and play
as like a laser cutter where you just have your vector, you throw it in, you choose a few settings,
you're good to go. I don't have a PCB tool
chain up and running yet. I don't think there's a a path tool chain that involves both milling
and laser right now which I would really like for PCBs. I have run into a few errors. The machine has occasionally gotten into a weird state. Particularly, I've had
some spindle errors. You can get into a weird software state. It's never happened while milling it's never interrupted a job or anything and restarting the
machine always fixes it. It should be fixed in a firmware update it's not a major issue. I do wish that it had a
more robust XYZ probe. It has a Z probe which is great, but if you have something that's like say like I've been trying
to make custom fixtures that bolt down to the bed and what I realized is
I don't have a good way of locating them in XY. So all of the bits that this
shipped with are 8th inch bits shafts and 8th inch collet They do ship with some other collets including quarter inch. And I went out and got a
quarter inch 2 flute and mill off of McMaster Car and I don't know, I'm being a fair bit more
aggressive with that bit than the manual says I probably should. It doesn't have any feeds
and speeds for quarter inch but I'm milling things like delrin and even aluminum for roughing with the quarter inch bit
at pretty decent speeds. So I don't know if I'm putting too much wear and tear on this machine, but it certainly is helping
me with machining times. I was going from hours and hours down to, I don't know,
this took me maybe an hour of machine time to make. Maybe the Makera folks
are gonna yell at me and tell me I'm ruining my machine. But so far so good. The only problem now is
that it kind of interferes with the automatic tool changer 'cause I have to change
collets between bits. The last thing that you
probably are wondering is how much does it cost? The list price is $5,000 plus shipping. They are 20% off. If you go to strangeparts.com/carvera. And there's a a clickable
link down in the description. And in the interest of full disclosure that is an affiliate link and the proceeds from it go
to supporting the channel. So I think that about does it. I mean to wrap things up,
I think if you're looking for a solid works out of
the box desktop C&C mill, this is a great option. And that's not my paid opinion. That's my genuine opinion. I'm really happy to have this and it's gonna become a
regular tool here in the shop. I'm already working on
multiple projects on it and you'll definitely see
it in upcoming videos. So, if you want something
that can make circuit boards and cut plastic and aluminum, it's relatively straightforward to use. It's a great option. It's not your cheapest
option, but it's solid. If you'd like to support Strange Parts I just launched a Patreon. You can find out more about that at patreon.com/strangeparts and you'll get early access to rough cuts while we're editing videos like this as well as a ton of other stuff, including t-shirts and hoodies and all sorts of other
behind the scenes things. All the money goes into the channel and allowing me to work on cool projects that are sometimes expensive and hiring some folks to help
me make more exciting videos. If you'd like to support me in the channel please go check that out.
