Andrew, much of what you have said rings true on so many levels, but before I get into that, I want to praise Ted and Brian on their honest, straightforward support of the Handibot user base. Without Ted and Brian’s insight and support, the Handibot would have followed many Kickstarter projects from empowering their dreams into fueling nightmares. I was one of those supporters, and to be honest, it was one of the few times I think I made a smart Kickstarter decision. I have owned a Handibot V1.0, v1.1, and now a V2.0. I was very tempted by the Bridge upgrade, but the additional weight (and cost) scared me away, but I do have a long list of Handibot accessories several well-used others collecting dust.
At the same time, I am possibly on the wrong side of the Handibot story, as I am not in the US either. Fortunately, I live close enough to the US to make picking items up there as possible but hardly convenient. Of course, with COVID-19 closing the border, even that option is gone.
Like Mark, thanks for all your insight along the way, the Handibot was my first personal CNC machine, I bought into the idea because I saw a use case for its form factor, that is a CNC machine I could take to the material. I am NOT a professional, purely a hobbyist. Any “professional” out there would likely laugh at the struggles I have had and the many missteps.
That said, I can’t guess at the number of jobs I have done for which the Handibot was ideal for, at least for me. To list a few: countless ceiling tiles I routed for lighting, smoke detectors and speakers, not because I couldn’t do the job some other way, but because the Handibot could do it perfectly time after time after time; perfect bowties joints into large tabletops and islands; in place Japanese joints; carved faces on tree trunks, (the stumps of trees that were fallen) totem pole style; and used the rotary access to duplicate antique finials.
Could I have done these otherwise, of course, but the Handibot has remained the go-to tool for these types of repeated tasks.
To be clear, I have a WorkBee 1010, which allows me to do many of the jobs I had initially envisioned using the Handibot would do. But as convenient as the larger format machine is, I still turn to the Handibot for many tasks.
By the way, v-slot extrusions may have helped fuel the maker arena, but they have also opened a whole new market for conversions to linear rails, as the plastic v-wheels wear quickly and are affected significantly by dust. Leading to many OpenBuild owners having commercial level price tags surrounding their machine builds. Take a look at things like CNC3D’s
QueenBee, CNC4Newbie’s
WorkBee-Slider &
NEW-Carve CNC,
Franco CNC Build (which is a whole series of updates) or even OpenBuild builds like
Jacob Lotter. Franco never converted to linear rails but spent a fortune on ClearPath Servos and a Centroid Acorn Controller; ironically, he sold his WorkBee shortly after building it. Yes, as you mentioned, cheap Chinese linear rails are helping to fuel that change, but the line between low cost and junk is blurred even when buying from the same company.
A few weeks back I went to do a job, and the Handibot was not working, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the issue was and with help from Brian, we have narrowed down the problem. The point is, with the Handibot not working, I needed to find a way to finish the task at hand. The job is beyond the WorkBee’s capacity, and the material was already in place/use. So, even if I had a larger capacity machine, I would have to remove the target item to get the job done. That job is now back to the bottom of the Honey-Do-List!
But I digress.
Controller problems are not unique to the Handibot, or Shopbot, unfortunately, they are a general CNC problem. Even if you build the best controller ever, it is only a matter of time before something with fancier lights comes along. Centroid has created a whole business behind retrofitting new controllers into old machines, including some Shopbots. I think controller issues hurt Handibot specifically because the Handibot, promoted as a new type of “tool”, is expected to “just work”, you plug it in throw the switch and magic happens!
Yes, I was one of those many Brian had to help with communication issues to the point where I only use the Handibot hardwired network. Hardwired connections are not unique to Handibot; generally, you end up doing this with most controllers as WiFi interference seems to be an issue in most places I have tried to use the Handibot.
I realize I have not helped answer any of the many questions that surround the future of the Handibot concept. However, I did want to state the Handibot has a unique use case that even the Shaper Tools solution fails to address, at least not entirely. Of course, my humble opinion (having never used one) is there is nothing the Shaper Tools solution does I can’t do with a router and template/jig.
I am much further along in my CNC knowledge growth than I was when I supported the Handibot Kickstarter campaign, would I buy a Handibot today? Probably not, mostly because of cost. Would I give up the Handibot I have? Not willingly, or at least as long as I have some usage for it!