CW-CX Woodworking System

After reading all the reviews on this machine, I have found that most all are untrue, for me.This machine has worked flawlessly for me out of the box, no problems with the carveWright CW-CX, I am happier than a pig in mud.Thank you very much

I bought a carvewright last fall, direct from the manufacturer. I also bought the software, and a few extra bits.The Good:When it works, it can produce pretty nice quality carvings or cuts. The software is more user friendly then other CNC machines.The Bad:The machine is insanely finicky. It frequently ruins nice carves by going off slightly, or losing it's mind entirely and carving whereever it wants. This despite me trying to follow their care instructions to the letter, cleaning it after every carve, and trying to generally baby it.I received the device with a bad memory card reader. I called them, they had me try some different things, and once it was determined the card reader was bad, they had the nerve to suggest I should pay the shipping cost to send me a replacement. I paid $2100 total for the carvewright, and you couldn't bother to check the card reader to make sure it worked before shipping it to me, and you want ME to pay the shipping on a replacement??? They did eventually ship it free, but made it clear this was a kindness they were doing for me.Dust is it's mortal enemy, but it doesn't come with any sort of dust collection setup. I made one, which forces me to keep the safety cover open for my dust hood to fit, making the carvewright less safe.The two extension tables have such thin side supports, they bend when there is any weight from wood on them, so they don't actually support the weight at all, making them useless.The device uses a metal washer as a way of adjusting the strength it pushes down on your workpiece, and it's critical it push down with the right amount of force. You could add or remove washers to change that amount of force, but it uses a weird washer size that I can't find, nor does LHR sell them.They censor their forums.LHR goes out of their way to "lock" you into the carvewright ecosystem. For example, the memory card you use to load the carve instructions into the machine with is just a PCMCIA card. Google them - they're slow, large and outdated. They could easily update the machine to use SD cards, or Compact Flash, but then they wouldn't be able to charge a ridiculous markup for the cards or card reader. The machine doesn't use the standard CNC bits that all other CNC machines use. Instead they have their own bits, which they warn you if you do not use, you'll ruin your machine. There are cheaper, higher quality bits for sale that will work in the carvewright (check ebay). Then they have the cahones to charge you crazy shipping charges - $12 is the base shipping charge, even when buying a part that's smaller then your finger, and could be shipped in a postal envelope.Their software is buggy. It frequently crashes, it's controls are hard to use, and it's very very slow.Even through you're buying a 3d carving device, you can't actually import 3d images to carve, without shelling out at least $200 more for additional software addons.Technically the carvewright does what it says, and can be an impressive woodworking tool. Unfortunately, the company that makes the carvewright uses scummy practices which completely turn me off from them. Unfortunately I'm now locked in, so I will still be stuck buying their overpriced parts and bits until I can save up enough to move to a better CNC machine from another company. Any other company.

Bought direct from manufacturer and got very few good carvings out of it (16). Its a machine that requires perfectly cut boards, mechanical skills as it is always having error messages that stop the machine mid-carve. You'll need a shop vac and air compressor as well.Thought the support is pretty good, its mostly by users rather than the company. They do have lots of self repair videos and pdfs for most of these. But without the help on facebook, this machine would have been tossed a long time ago. It may still happen.For the money I would try a cheaper machine, that way you dont have much invested in it.My current status with the machine is almost 50 attempts at carves and only around 16 successes.The saddest part is that their ads keep coming up on my facebook home page and every time I respond to someone on it about my experiences, that doesnt place the maching in a good light, such as it being very finicky - my posts are removed by the Carvewright company. That alone should scare everyone out of purchasing this machine.BTW - I also invested in a planer, tables saw, router, more router and carving bits, sharpening tools, a Dremel and finishing supplies like stain and paint almost all from Amazon. Also a Dewalt cabinet to place it on. You can figure on spending considerably more ultimately on peripherals. It was around $2000 for me, excluding the wood, which isnt cheap either and generally not readily available at your local lumber supplier. Its typically warped or bowed and useless for the machine.

I purchased a CarveWright CNC CX model a little over 10 years ago. I didn’t really know very much about CNC carving machines at the time, only what the final product was supposed to look like. After checking to see what was available on the market, I chose the CarveWright machine. It was designed on a different principal and looked to be more versatile that the others. It had a smaller footprint, (16X 25 inches) and was somewhat less expensive than other CNC’s. Because it only weighed a little over 60 pounds. I could put it on a cart and move it around. Some CNC’s weight as much as 300 pounds or more and require 4 feet or more of space and didn’t have room for anything of that size. I downloaded the software and loaded a pattern I had selected from the many hundreds available. Of course, the wood has to be flat with parallel sides for proper carving and can’t be cupped or twisted. But depending upon the severity of the distortion, it can be overcome with the use of a jig. My first project came out looking pretty good, but not the size I expected. I called CarveWright support and asked why that had happened. After a couple of questions, they explained to me things that I had forgotten to do. Since then, I’ve only had minor issues with my machine. I’ve carved boards as long as 8 feet and boards 12 inches wide. Since it is a machine with moving parts, like any machine there is some periodic maintenance required to keep in fine-tuned, and running optimally. A dust collecting system is a big advantage and reduces the amount of required maintenance. Eventually parts do wear out though and need to be replaced. CarveWright keeps a good supply of replacement parts. CarveWright support has always been very helpful whenever I had an issue with the machine or the design of a project. Sometimes they email a web link to a page or pages in the maintenance manual, or to one of the many “How-To” videos available through their website or YouTube. I’ve also attended several of the seminars that CarveWright offers annually. Critique sheets are provided at the finish and improvements made to the scope of the presentations over the years. It’s a good way to get new ideas from both the instructors and other carvers attending the conference. I learned new ways to do things with the basic software which has also been improved regularly over the years, from Designer-1 through Designer-5. There are other software programs also available when you want to do more sophisticated carvings. It’s the only CNC machine I know of that offers a jig so cylindrical items can be carved in the round. (360°)They have since come out with a new machine the works on the same principal as the older model, but is much faster and requires less maintenance and I’m looking forward to trying it out.