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-V-Carve 30x30 table

that is a fairly light duty carver. It does provide a method for one to get into the CNC world without as much of a learning curve...lol. You can carve relief's such as decorative pieces also you can do small signs. Not designed as a commercial machine mostly for the Hobbyist. JMHO.

BTW when I saw your post I thought you ment X Carve 30 x 30. thus my comment.
 
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I would look for ideas on how to use it to augment some of the things you already do.

Everybody does signs and plaques, so I'm not sure how to differentiate yourself there, but Imagine making specialty items for niche markets.

Are there items you've made for your wife's quilting hobby that you could streamline with a CNC?
Could you customize those sorts of items to make them "special".
Maybe special boxes for holding quilting items you could customize with their name, or initials, monogram, i.e.

Look at Jason Beam. He's made a pretty decent business out of custom making branding irons out of brass using his cnc.

I'm not sure how profitiable it would be, but I could see maybe making custom record crates with mine on the CNC.
 
Why not personalized CNC carved drawer fronts to replace those blah drawers in kitchens, or carved cabinet face frames or inset panels, or custom carved mantle pieces, picture frames....anything wood. Creativity knows no bounds!
 
I agree with others above, there are lots of things you can do with one. For sewing and quilting, look at some of the organizers for spools and things that have grooves and pockets carved into them. For things like your mantel project, you could have carvings in the face.

Are you looking at a used or new one? If you can post up the specs, we can give you a better idea of what all you can expect of it.
 
well, tell your friend that he will have a roughly 29" x 29" cutting area to play with. plenty of room for just about anything. he will have a workable depth of about 2.5". another thing, i've seen a lot of people needing to change brushes in the routers that they use, may want to keep that in mind. another thing is, is that the z axis is run by a belt, rather than a machine screw like my shapeoko2. they have come out with a replacement for it, called the hdz, from the looks of it, it is about the same set up as my shapeoko 2, but on steroids, its being sold as a replacement for the belt driven z axis set up. another thing to save money on, avoid this new bit changer gimmick, and the touch pad thing for setting your z axis zero point. you can change bits by hand with no problems, and a good old bit of paper (standard 20 lb for your printer works best), and it will get you to within a skinny cat hair, split seven times (0.004"). as far as software goes, don't go cheap with carbide create (free), lots of limits as to what it can do. go with vectric's vcarve desktop, very good software, i use it. the pro version only has a couple more bells and whistles, and if going to make and carve 3d stuff, spend the $1100 on aspire. i use universal gcode sender, and have no problems with it. other than watching your feeds and speeds (if you want to go fast, go shallow, with lots of passes), i would advise to start out with a few simple signs, and such, before getting into more complicated items. once he gets the hang of it, his other tools will get jealous, and start planning a revolution.... lol
 
SHORT answer - YES, there is tons of money that CAN be made.

Longer answer - is your friend savy with computers, CAM and CAD. CNC can be a daunting learning curve. I have a client 77 years old, never touched a CNC machine in his life but he is learning. He pretty much gave up on trying to program. I help him about once a week and I do all his programming. Is your friend willing to sell his services? There IS a lot to it. It is VERY do-able, but there is a LOT to learn. How will he be learning?
 
From my experience, your friend will need to learn software like SketchUp, VCarve, or some other combination to do various projects. It's not just the learning curve on the software, but the cost as well. The $2,000 for a basic XCarve is just the starting point.

The cost of the ShapeOko2 kit like some of us bought was much cheaper, but required more effort to get it all together. Of course, as soon as I got started with the basic kit, I modified the way I assembled it to make it larger (my bed is about 17" by 48").

In my case, I had no intention of starting a business with my CNC. It was to give me another tool to enhance my projects and to make gifts for friends and family.
 
i think mine has grown to 32" wide, and about 48" long. i agree with bill, that the learning curve of the software will be a bit of a chore, but once past, it will turn into fun. i make stuff as presents, signs on demand, and stuff for the etsy store, but, its all good clean (or as chips and dust will permit) fun. one venue he may want to look into, is the inventables site, it may be a bit cheaper than buying ready made, and the best part is, is that he will know his machine inside and out, as he assembled it himself.
 
just checked with openbuilds, both of these are 40" x 40", these are the prices on 2 of them, with 4 nema 23 stepper motors, 24v power supply, black box motion controller, and a dewalt 611 router. the lead cnc 1010 is $1840, and the openbuilds workbee 1010 is $1940, you would need to add shipping of course. after looking them both over, the workbee seems to be the more stout of the two. not too sure what kind of budget your friend has in mind.
 
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