CNC mills are truly awesome devices, but they’re also enormous and generally insanely expensive. There’s a reason; they’re very precise motion tools that follow instructions exactly, and those aren’t generally cheap. Nor, for that matter, do they generally fit on a desktop. Carvey, however, drives down the cost of owning one, and will even fit on your desk.
Carving It Out
As the Kickstarter explains, Carvey is designed to essentially streamline the production process as much as technologically possible. It actually started with materials; Inventables noticed that it was difficult to get high-quality materials in anything other than excessively high quantities, and started a business to sell those materials to crafters and inventors in smaller batches for a better price. Carvey is the end result of that, right down to the fact that you can control it with any laptop and a basic web browser.
That said, of course, there are a few drawbacks, although fewer than you might think,
Whittled Down
Surprisingly, it’s not materials: Carvey will work with most woods, plastics, fiberboard, even some metals. If you’ve ever tried to machine metal, you’d understand just how surprising that is. It’s even got a high resolution. No, the fundamental problem is size: With a work area of just 12” x 8” x 2.75”, you’re basically either machining parts or carving smaller stuff.
On the other hand, that’s still a lot better for many than not having their own CNC mill at all, and Carvey appears dedicated more towards the smaller end of desktop manufacturing anyway. Besides, if you’ve got a dream, or just parts you’d like to machine, this will put that on your desktop for the relatively low price of $2300. You’ll need to act fast, though: It’s fully funded, and the Kickstarter only lasts another month.
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