Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “First Look: The Goliath CNC Robot – Cuts full sheets but fits in a backpack”.
Welcome to make workshop, where we check out tech tools and toys built for makers today we’re going to be looking at a cnc routing robot now i know all cnc routers are technically robots, but this one’s extra robotic. This is the goliath cnc this little robot here that you see rolling around on my workbench is actually a cnc machine capable of cutting even full sheets of plywood, maybe even bigger than that. Now we first saw the goliath cnc at maker faire years ago, and we all had the same questions looking at it. First of all, we all agreed that it looks awesome. It’S a little robot that drives around and cuts the wood underneath it and that’s just so. Cool, but we all have the same questions like how the heck are they going to deal with the fact that you’re cutting the material that you’re also driving on i mean it kind of makes sense right. You just cut it and drive on it with big fat tires they’re using these omni wheels here which allow them to go in any direction and turn on the spot. But then you have to think about things like what about. If you cut a pocket or a large area, that’s hollowed out. How do you deal with that and really the power of goliath, i think, is mostly in the software, though the hardware is no slouch either. Let’S get into it, hey, you are you subscribed to make magazine? Yet if you like this kind of video of projects and stuff to build, you are going to love, make magazine, it comes out quarterly and it is packed full of tips and tricks. Full projects that you can recreate and feature pieces explaining how makers are changing the world for the better. You can find information on how to subscribe in a multitude of ways, digital or get the actual print edition in your mailbox at the link above the link below in the description now back to the video all right, the hardware.
Well, these are extremely simple as far as using them goes. I don’t even know what’s inside this, you don’t have to interact with it much other than to connect, it move it around a few times and screw it into your material, the machine itself. Let’S look at some of the different things here: you’ll recognize basically a handheld router for your cutting tool.
This is plugged directly in to the goliath, so you have only one cord to mess with up here, which is good, because this is moving around you don’t want a bunch of cables getting in your way now the goliath itself has handles again really really pushing that Portability aspect of the goliath: it also has built-in dust collection, this whole system, pops off, and you have your dust bin with filters on top. I was actually quite surprised with how well this worked. You can see the output port there and that just pops back on there you can see they thought this out. There are filters on all of the inlets for where the their machine needs air to cool down the motors. It’S got these giant uh omnidirectional wheels. Here now these are the kind of wheels that allow it to go in any direction or spin on the spot, and you can see they’ve got them three layers deep, so that when you’re going over a cut the size of my finger or something like that, it Has no problem, it’s always kind of got a grip and the ability to move around. It also has the built-in uh dust boot and that’s really it for the hardware it’s hefty. It feels rigid. It does not feel at all like it’s going to come apart.
However, the dust hood itself is held on by magnets, which is good. You want it to be able to knock off really easily, so it doesn’t hurt anything, but also it kind of came loose a bunch of times during my cut. Luckily, there’s a sensor that tells when it’s loose, you go over, you put it back in place and it resumes the cut no problem. So now, let’s talk about the software and the actual process for cutting.
Now it seems with the software. They are really trying to make this as user friendly as possible. It vaguely reminds me of something like easel or something like that here we have the interface, it’s called slingshot and you bring in svg files. Unfortunately, you’re not going to be doing your cam stuff in other software and exporting it and bringing it over in the g-code and you’re not going to be cutting 3d files.
This is really 2.5 d, so that means you can cut, outlines and shapes, and then you can even do pockets, but that’s it. No like contours like a human face, or something like that here, you can actually see where the black lines here are the outlines that i wanted cut and then that gray block there is a pocket, because i was extremely curious how this is going to handle a Pocket now again, for those who are unfamiliar, a pocket is where you actually hollow out a hole or a big section, at least a little bit. In this case, i was going a little over seven and a half millimeters down, which is enough that it would affect this if it drove over it. The pocket was big enough that a whole wheel could fit inside of it, and i just really wanted to see how it would handle it turns out it handles it.
Just fine, you see the software aside from being very easy to use, which it was extremely easy to use, really does a lot on the back end that you never see. There’S a lot of computation that goes into how to move the machine so that it stays on the material, doesn’t ram into the sensors or the power cord and then approaches the cuts at the right angles so that it’s never really in danger of losing its grip. And then cutting that pocket without ever having to run over that spot again, there’s a lot of computation that goes into it. Whenever you hit compute after you put in your file – and it worked, i’m gon na say that the the planning and everything worked flawlessly, the uh. The goliath itself is uh for sale on their website goliathcnc.com as a pre-order right now for just under four thousand 000. Now, before i get into the pros and cons and what i think about it, let’s just first address this.
This is not a sponsored video i’m sending this unit back after i make the video they sent it just to so we could check it out, but i have to admit i was really eager and curious, because it’s not every day that we get some kind of Completely new and interesting and innovative way of doing some of these things, we’ve seen for a very long time, so i was very eager to test out this machine and try it so again go to goliathcnc.com to check out the prices as they move forward and see The release date now, what do i think about the machine now? This isn’t a full review. Most of these videos are not full reviews. I don’t usually get into all the review stuff in these videos: they’re product showcases, i’m showing off and demoing cool stuff. So you can make your own decisions, but when you make your decision on this, there are some things you need to consider. Uh. The the price point first is just under four thousand dollars, which places it firmly on the cheaper side of small cnc routers that are bigger than like a uh, an x-carve or a shapoco, the the standard ones right so they’re cheaper than this, but they’re smaller.
Once you move up to say something that can do a two by four four by four uh sheet four foot by four foot sheet, then your prices go up substantially. So this is on the cheaper end of something that can do a large sheet and then, when you go up to something that can do a full four foot by eight foot sheet, this would be insanely cheap uh as far as that goes. But there are trade-offs. This machine is on these. These you know omnidirectional wheels which, by their their own nature, by the way they work are gon na not provide really any force against the cut. So that means all your cuts have to be fairly shallow and it can take a while to do a project, something that you know on a big machine. That’S very rigid! You could cut. You know an inch deep on this you’re, really cutting only a few millimeters at a time and and quite slowly at that to avoid things like chatter or or vibration in the machine.
But you can throw this in a duffel bag and carry it to a job site. So there’s a trade-off there and i’d say really of all of the selling points that this machine may or may not. You know push the portability seems to be the one defining like really standout factor of this machine. It’S got these handles it’s portable.
You could throw it in a bag. Take it to your job site, keep it in the bat in your car trunk, never even notice. It’S there. One thing i would have liked to have seen since portability seems to be like the main selling point would be a way to store end mills, the the wrench to take the end mills out other collets screws, because you need screws to screw these in and even To store these, so maybe a clever way of attaching them on here when it’s in transit or even just a bag, a cheap bag that you could throw it all in would have maybe been nice but absolutely isn’t necessary as far as its capabilities as you saw, It cut the project i threw at it.
This is not very high quality wood, so you may have seen some of that vibration that i was getting. I could probably go back through the settings and change the feed rate at which it’s cutting or the depth of the cut to smooth out those things. I don’t believe the machine is incapable. I believe it’s perfectly capable of doing beautifully smooth cuts, but you are going to have to do some trial and error based on the material material you’re, using because different materials kind of respond, different ways to the end mill going through them. As i said earlier, i was impressed with the dust collection system. I’Ve used all sorts of cnc routers and generally the dust collection systems are iffy and i’m going to end up with a fine dust on everything in my shop, even with their dust collection systems turned on this one. I was quite surprised with how well it collected it. I mean it makes sense, because this is just so tight to the material you can see here.
I can’t even get my pinky underneath it, so it’s really really capturing it and it filters it quite well. I i was impressed there and then the fact that you know this machine figured out the paths to go to be able to cut all this and it cut. You know that project on that plywood, i i have to say i’m impressed with how well it turned out thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed it, be sure to give us a thumbs up on this channel. It really helps us out a lot and subscribe. So you don’t miss out on any of our future cool videos. You .