My favorite way to run Carbide Motion.

I like playing around with my workshop about as much as I like making things in my workshop. So I am always adding and changing things and playing with new tools and software and stuff. I had recently gotten CNCjs up and running and a raspberry pi 4 when the good folks at Carbide 3D announced their new BitSetter product. While community heroes like Neil Ferreri have done the lords work and made it easy to use through his macros and post processor edits, between this and the HDZ, I wanted to give Carbide Motion another shot so that I could quickly and easily keep up with all the new stuff the Carbide product team was up to.

I’d been using a Mac Book Pro to drive the machine, but a) that’s overkill and b) there are fans, and fans + dust = a soon to be dead machine. The fancy YouTubers have Surface Pros, and those are amazing but also expensive. I wanted something with a touch screen that was both fanless and affordable.

So, let’s look at cheap Windows 10 tablets. I tried a couple and they were, well, basically garbage. Bad build quality, out dated firmware, no full size USB ports, etc etc.

HOT TIP: MOST CHEAP TABLETS HAVE 32 GIGS OF STORAGE, WHICH IS NOT ENOUGH CAPACITY TO PROCESS CURRENT WIN 10 UPDATES.

But then I came across the Fusion 5. It’s well built, it has a non usb power supply AND a full-size USB slot, and most importantly, enough storage space to manage Windows 10 updates. (all of these devices ship with Windows 10S, which you can one time upgrade to Windows 10 Home for free). After a quick setup process, I was able to get it up to date and let me tell you, Carbide Motion looks and feels great on a small touch screen.

I added a short, flexible mounting arm to my table, and all together it really feels like a nice, comprehensive package. There may be other slightly cheaper tablets out there, but having waded through a couple of crap myself, I don’t think you’re gonna find a better one for sub $200.

A QUICK UPDATE 1/29/20:

There appears to be a bug that causes the tablet to freeze when it falls asleep. You can get it back to normal with a hard restart by simply holding the power button for 10-15 seconds, and avoid it by disabling sleep. Just remember to shut the unit down when you power off your shapeoko. Luckily, it boots pretty fast off the internal memory, so this isn't a huge deal. Not ideal, but all things considered, I still really like this device for doing this one thing.

A SECOND QUICK UPDATE 2/13/20:

A Facebook user has reported an issue when using an external controller: “It displays "busy" while jogging and then hits a resource error after about 1 minute of use….Controller is usb, I've tried directly in the USB port, a separate USB hub, and then an independently powered USB hub in case the power output from the tablet was an issue. All with the same results. By the way the type of jogging i'm currently doing is manual, on the fast setting, while doing an initial surfacing of the stock wasteboard before I go on to make the supplementary threaded wasteboard. So I'm essentially "mowing the lawn" with a 1" bit, making it about 1 to 2 passes before the resource error.”

I personally just use the touch screen so I have not encountered the error, but his methodology seems sound, so I thought it fair to share, in case others experience the same, and so that folks are not under the illusion that is by any means a perfect product. Who knows how many corners have to get cut to cram this much tech into a sub $200 package while also including full legit Windows 10 license?

My stance is still basically “I would not use this as a real computer, but in this one case, it does this job pretty well”. But again, I am basically using it to load g-code over the network, manually jog using the touch screen, and hit the start button. And that’s how I think a lot of other folks will use it as well, but I encourage you to kick the tires well and make sure it works for you while you are in the 30-day return window!

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