Updates and announcements from Carbide 3D.
It's been a busy stretch for Carbide Create. Since build 853 (which was on the main download page until recently) we've added new toolpath options, new ways to build 3D models, and a faster 3D view, and we've rebuilt a lot of the toolpath code underneath. Many of the fixes came straight from your forum posts and crash reports. There's far too much to list everything, so here are the highlights.
You use AI for things and we use AI for things- that's a given. But we should not use AI to talk to each other.
We've seen an uptick in crashes reported in Carbide Motion due to video drivers. In the past, this was due to outdated drivers, but now we're seeing the problem even with up-to-date drivers. The real problem is that the crashes are occurring in third-party libraries that we depend on but didn't write. The only way out seems to be updating those libraries, which is a significant undertaking.
Apple has announced that they will be ending support for Intel-based Macs when macOS 27 is released in late 2026.
We quietly make changes to the Shapeoko 5 Pro all the time, but most of them are not things that the average user would ever notice. Today, we're ready to share the latest change, which has already been shipping- the Shapeoko 5.1 Pro.
A couple of months ago, we started a thread in the forum asking for everyones number one request for Carbide Create. We knocked out a lot of the low-hanging fruit quickly, but one of them sent us down a rabbit hole.
We're excited to announce some major updates in the new Carbide Create V8 beta, and we think most users will really enjoy them.
For a few years, we've used a service called BugSplat to record crashes of our software under Windows and upload them to us. BugSplat has helped us dramatically reduce the number of bugs in our software, and we'd like to make it clear how users can benefit from it more directly.
We'll skip to the punchline here- Norton and McAfee suck. Multiple times per year, they flag our software as having a virus and they've never been correct.
We're about to make a big change in Carbide Motion so we wanted to give everyone the biggest heads-up possible. It’s something we’ve had on the drawing board for a long time, but we held off because it's a breaking change to the existing workflow.
Our PCB troubles a month ago gave us the opportunity to dig into our support process (really, it forced us to), and we found a lot of things that could be improved. The net result is a 2x to 4x improvement in our response times, depending on the day of the week.
This is inside info that may not be interesting to most people, but it explains what goes on behind the scenes, and what we do to try and help users out. It may be interesting to those trying to figure out the best way to get help.
We just uploaded a new beta version of Carbide Create, Build 760, with some huge changes for huge files.
So, we had some trouble with Shapeoko 5 Pro PCBs that we hope is behind us.
(This is going to get nerdy; I apologize in advance.)
As we've had more and more people upgrade to Carbide Motion V6, we've seen lots of reports of homing problems after upgrading. After spending a lot of time following up on customer support tickets, we think we've found the problem.
We just added a new potential time saver to Carbide Motion based on lots of requests from the community, bounds checking.
The initial feedback on the new Shapeoko 5 Pro has been overwhelmingly positive and we're excited to open up ordering so we can gather a little more information about what sizes are going to be most popular.
Here's what we can tell you about the timing of the initial batch of Shapeoko 5 Pros:
We'd like to announce the latest update to the Shapeoko product line, the Shapeoko 5 Pro.
The Shapeoko 5 Pro is a massive upgrade in capability and performance. It is meant to be the last CNC router you'll buy, not a stepping stone to something better. It is the culmination of 11 years of experience and feedback from the community.
After weeks of beta testing, we've released Carbide Create V7 with a lot of big changes. The download can be found at: https://carbide3d.com/carbidecreate/download/ for those that want to try it out. It includes lots of new features so we'd like to encourage everyone to try it out.
And now, on to the changes...
The data that we've been able to collect from users over the past few months has made something very clear, almost all machine disconnects we see today are caused by static electricity from the vacuum hoses. I'm sure that some will find that to be a controversial statement, but it's based on the best data we have in working through problems that real customers are having.
NOTE: Carbide Create V6 has been replaced by V8. Create V6 is no longer available for download.
After the better part of a year of work, we're ready to call Carbide Create V6 "Done" and encourage everyone to give it a shot.
NOTE: Carbide Create V6 has been replaced by V8. Create V6 is no longer available for download.
We’ve been working on Carbide Create V6 since June of this year and we’re finally ready to recommend that everyone give it a try.
Here’s a summary of what’s new:
Here’s a problem we’ve heard from some Shapeoko users:
“The Z-axis randomly plunges down at the start of the job and gouges into my stock. What’s up?”
We spoke to all of our support people to make sure we understood the problem and we can confidently say that this is a workflow problem, not a hardware or software problem.
Script fonts are always popular for CNC designs. The difficult part of using a script font is that you usually want the letters in the text merged into a single object rather than a separate set of characters that are next to each other, but not combined.
We'll use Carbide Create V6, which includes new tools to make this easier.
Today we’re opening preorders on our newest CNC router, the Shapeoko HDM, our most capable machine and a machine with a long R&D history at Carbide 3D.
NOTE: Carbide Create V6 has been replaced by V8. Create V6 is no longer available for download.
Today we're posting the first beta of Carbide Create V6. We have big plans for V6 but we needed to start with all of the changes that are likely to break compatibility or changes that are most likely to modify the user interface compared to V5. Here's what we've got so far :
We just uploaded build 527 of Carbide Create and it contains a lot of changes from the last stable release (520).
We already covered the addition of layers in 521 a blog post about it so we'll just go over the big changes since then:
UPDATE: 5/21 - The rails have arrived and final assembly of Shapeoko Pros is happening right now. We're planning to put Shapeoko Pros in stock on Tuesday morning at 7am PDT.
Original Post...
To say that we're shocked at how hard it is to get parts for the Shapeoko Pro is an understatement. I don't think we could make up this series of events if we tried.
A little history...
We just uploaded a new release of Carbide Create, build 521, with a big addition- layers!.
We just put our first batch of the new Shapeoko in stock and we wanted to share the plan for today and the next few weeks.
The old Shapeoko Pro post was getting a little long so we wanted to add a new post to update everyone on the Shapeoko Pro and Shapeoko 4.
Like most of our product development, this is not something we planned to do, it just kind of happened… again. We saw the completed Shapeoko Pro and we fell in love. We couldn't unsee it. We wanted more. So we did the only logical thing we could do, we made the Shapeoko 4.
[UPDATES BELOW] We're getting a lot of email and calls about the status of the Shapeoko Pro. If there are that many people reaching out, then we can only imagine that there are many more who want to know, but haven't gotten in touch.
If all goes well, we're only a couple of weeks from opening up ordering for the Nomad 3 so it's time to share some specifics.
This doesn’t happen very often. We've made a new accessory for the Shapeoko and we've decided to discontinue it.
We’d like to announce something totally new for us, and really, new for the industry as a whole – our new 30-Day Mistakes Are On Us policy.
Today we’re happy to announced that we’re partnered with Mercury One to raise money for the people of Detroit. We’ll be matching donations dollar for dollar today, up to $25,000.
Many of you have noticed that the Nomad has been out of stock for a while now and have called or emailed to see what’s going on. So, here’s the deal with the Nomad.
After a few weeks of testing the latest builds of Carbide Create, we're finally ready to move 413, our latest release, from "Beta" to "Stable".
I’m Luke, formally known as Mr Beaver, and this is a surreal moment. I’m stoked to be writing my first blog post announcing that I have joined the ranks of the Carbide 3D team!
This is a tough post to write. In fact, we've been putting off writing this post for quite a while; putting it off for longer than we should have to be honest.
Build 400 is the first in the series we're calling Carbide Create V4. This is just the start, look for lots of changes in the near future.
We just posted our newest product, the Carbide Compact Router. This is something we've been working on for a while to eliminate the supply trouble we've had trying to get enough DeWalt and Makita routers to sell.
We just added a another new couple of features to the beta version of Carbide Create 316, toolpath grouping, and undo for toolpath deletion.
We just added a couple of new features to the beta version of Carbide Create 315, toolpath rendering and dragging and dropping of toolpaths.
For the first time in the history of Carbide 3D, we will not have our own booth at Bay Area Maker Faire this weekend. Don't worry though, you still have two ways to see our machines and talk to us.
One of the most common requests from Carbide 3D customers is a place to download CNC projects. And, although we have been sharing simple projects here and there on our docs site, we wanted to do better! So, a few months ago we started down the path of creating an entirely new site, dedicated exclusively to projects made for CNC! We call this site CutRocket.com
We just posted Carbide Create build 311 with the following changes:
We just uploaded a new version of Carbide Create, build 310, with a feature we’ve been planning for a while Texture Toolpaths.
We just uploaded a new build of Carbide Create with the following changes:
We just uploaded Carbide Create 307 with a small fix and a small addition.
Two quick Carbide Create updates for the weekend:
Grabe the latest here
We just uploaded a bug fix release for Carbide Create, build 305. Here's what we changed:
We just uploaded a new Carbide Create, build 304, with a huge new feature.
We just uploaded a new Carbide Create, build 303, that contains mostly bug fixes based on user feedback.
We just uploaded Carbide Create 302 with a couple of fixes and a great new feature.
We just posted a minor update to Carbide Create:
We just uploaded Carbide Create Build 289.
A lot of our customers are engineers, and their overwhelming feedback has been that they want to make PCBs on the Nomad. This was always possible but we didn’t have a recommended workflow or the tooling to support it.
We’ve fixed that now.
I went from idea to finished part in about 30 minutes when I made a desk stand for my 7" iPad Pro.
We just uploaded build 407 of the new V4 of Carbide Motion.
We've had Carbide Motion 4 and GRBL 1.1 out for about two weeks now and the feedback has been positive enough that we're recommending it for everyone except those running their machine 24/7 for production.
A quick update of all that we’ve got going on at Carbide 3d…
It’s time for our somewhat-annual State of Carbide 3D. We’re a small company but at the core we’re product development people so we always have a lot going on. Here’s what we can share:
We get a lot of questions about what router to use with the Shapeoko, the DeWalt DWP611 or the Makita RT0701C. We've been meaning to do a deatiled writeup for a while but it looks like we can cross it off the todo list.
Yesterday we uploaded Carbide Motion 366 to fix reports of “Cutter Stopped Responding” messages. This should almost never happen “in real life” but it’s happening anyway. From what we can tell, it seems to be the operating system delaying some messages getting passsed around the program.
As many of you know, our machines are based on the fantastic GRBL machine controller, which is open source and available for everyone to play with and review. For the past couple of years, we’ve stayed with the same version because it was stable and because the newer releases didn’t add much that we needed.
This is a guest post by Bob Warfield, founder of the popular CNCCookbook blog and author of G-Wizard, the leading feeds and speeds calculator.
We just uploaded a new build of Carbide Motion, 364. It includes:
We just uploaded a new Carbide Motion, build 363. This build fixes the weird jogging that could occur in 362 after setting the zero position.
Thanks to everyone who reported the problem.
We just uploaded Carbide Motion Build 362. It includes a handful of great updates, and shows where we're going next.
This is a guest post by Bob Warfield, founder of the popular CNCCookbook blog and author of G-Wizard, the leading feeds and speeds calculator.
In this multi-part series of guest posts, I want to walk you through the basics of feeds and speeds.
We just uploaded Carbide Motion 361 with the following changes-
When we started shipping Nomads, we told customers that we had a 90 day warranty because that seemed to be industry standard for a machine like ours. For the Shapeoko, we never really stated that we had a warranty because we didn’t know how to deal with a warranty on a kit.
For those who haven’t heard of it, the Cameo Silhouette is a computer controlled paper and vinyl cutter that seems to be mainly for the craft/scrapbooking market. This is not something I would expect to see mentioned in my circles, but I kept reading rave reviews about it. I had to try one.
We’ve got a couple of software changes to announce.
We've been working with some of our customers to fix a problem on the Shapeoko 3 that has quickly gained a mythology that far surpasses its reality. We've tried to answer questions when they pop up in forums but we decided to post a more definitive statement here.
2016 is off to a great start here at Carbide3D
In December, we ran a poll asking all of you for the number one feature you wanted to see in Carbide Create. The results were impressive, with lots of great suggestions. We almost immediately released the ability to import DXF and SVG files, and then began working on another request called v-carving.
2015 was a big year for everyone here at Carbide 3D so we wanted to take a little time to fill everyone in on what’s been going on.
Make: magazine, leader of the Maker Movement and producer of the popular Maker Faire events, just released their "Ultimate Guide to Desktop Fabrication 2016." Make: reviewed a wide variety of digital fabrication machines, from 3d printers, CNC machines, laser cutters, and vinyl cutters.
Today's a big day at Carbide 3D- we finally get to announce some of the things that we've been working on for the past few months.
It's been a few months since our last update so we figured it was about time to let everyone here know what we're spending our days doing.
We found GRBL, the motion control software that we use, a little over a year ago after other solutions failed to deliver the performance and reliability we needed. Since then, we've used it for both of our machines, the Nomad 883 and the Shapeoko 3, and it's safe to say that any Carbide machine in the foreseeable future will be based on GRBL.
We've gotten more Youtube videos featuring the Nomad than we ever expected. We love watching them to find out what users are doing with their machines but this one blew us away.
For those who have been following our progress over the past few months, it’s clear that we’ve been limited by the machine shops we rely on. We should probably just declare now that we’re control freaks- rather than find addition vendors, we decided to buy a machining center to make it possible to do more in-house.
UPDATE: Bob at CNCCookbook.com has posted more information about The Big News at CNC Cookbook
We can finally announce one of the things we've been working on for a while: Edward Ford, the guy who created the Shapeoko CNC router, is now a partner at Carbide 3D. We've been working on making this happen for months and we're thrilled to finally be able to tell everyone about it.
We'll keep you up to date on new things in the world of Carbide 3D, and CNC in general.