A bunch of years ago, I convinced myself to get a Carbide 3D Nomad benchtop CNC milling machine.
I loved the idea of a self-contained benchtop CNC mill that’s easy to use. A turnkey solution that can cut metal parts? Sounded great!
My expectations were off by miles.
The Carbide 3D Nomad CNC is slow. Weak. The design is inelegant, with a functional but flimsy door and open slots on the bottom that dumps chips onto my workbench. Right when I bought the machine, I initially tried to use it in my office – that was a mistake.
Its table is not perfectly flat, with or without the fixture plate (which I only recently finally installed), but close enough I guess.
Carbide 3D’s software was decent, and probably got better over the years.
Their support was helpful.
I like the company. I’m a fan of several people that work there.
But the machine?
It’s just not as capable as I needed, wanted, or expected.
While I regret buying it, I don’t completely blame the machine. I expected too much from it.
I recently dusted it off and placed it next to my 3D printer. I’ll fire it up this week and see if I can close the gap between its capabilities and my project interests.
Carbide 3D launched an upgraded Nomad 3 benchtop CNC milling machine a few years ago.
While an upgrade on paper, I always saw it as an iterative bunny hop forward.
And now there’s the new Nomad 4. Here is some of what Carbide 3D is claiming about this new “extreme” Nomad machine:
dramatically more performance
a motion system rigid enough to fully support the spindle’s power
a machine that works fast and stays accurate: faster cycle times, cleaner cuts
expanded cutting area
Nearly 10× the spindle power of the Nomad 3
The price went up quite a bit – the Nomad 4 is $5400 at the time this post was published.
Searching around, it seems that the Nomad 4 launched in May. 2 months later, and there’s not a single video about it on YouTube, even from Carbide 3D. I found nothing on their Instagram page either.
I tried to learn more about the new Nomad 4, but there’s still not much about what it can actually do.
It has a slightly larger working volume, more power, greater rigidity, and a bunch of quality of life improvements.
The Nomad 4 definitely looks to be a huge upgrade.
But is that enough these days?
The desktop CNC mill market has been shrinking and now seems to be growing again.
When’s the last time Taig or Sherline launched new machines? Both brands had a huge head start and – like Carbide 3D – seem to coasting forward with little momentum.
Bantam, which had huge potential, abandoned the benchtop CNC mill market. See Bantam Tools no Longer Sells CNC Milling or PCB Machines. They bought another company and now make CNC art machines.
At the same time, newcomers have been pushing the product category forward.
A new Nestworks machine should be shipping… at some time? It’s late. See New Nestworks C500 Desktop CNC Looks Amazing. But they keep saying it’s on the way. I think that Nestworks has the potential to become the Bambu of the desktop CNC industry. We’ll see.
Makera is launching their 3rd and least expensive CNC mill – see The Makera Z1 is a New Benchtop CNC for Beginners.
3D printers hold your hand these days. You can get maybe 95% or better quality with little to no skill. A little know-how and internet troubleshooting can solve most problems in the way of perfect quality.
But desktop CNC mills?
Most are slow, weak, and compromised. There’s not much you can do to help that.
But there’s plenty that can be done to ease major pain points in the same way 3D printer makers have.
Power and rigidity are very important, and Carbide 3D says they made improvements there.
But where’s the chip control? Easier probing? Improvements to workholding?
It doesn’t look like Carbide 3D made any changes to their vise attachment.
I want a dream machine. A desktop CNC that can easily cut metal, is easy to use, adaptable, and with versatile workholding capabilities.
Maybe I want to add a water blower line, or vacuum. Vise or fixture plate with standard hole pattern.
While the machine is limited, I also haven’t been devoting the time needed to leverage what it can do.
I’ve been testing a beginner CNC model this week and will be firing up my Nomad again.
In no uncertain terms, this is a product and project category that requires considerable time and effort. I am unfortunately very aware of what the Nomad CNC cannot do, but I haven’t been able to put enough time into the machine to learn how to leverage what it can do.
The thought crossed my mind – should I upgrade to the Nomad 4 and put my time into an updated, more capable, and more modern machine? But it’s simply too expensive. Even if it weren’t, there are other machines I’d buy over it, including emerging models such as the Nestworks.
I want more than what my Nomad CNC can do. But part of that is on me to build more varied experiences with it. That’s something I’ve been putting off for a while, and I’m out of excuses.
While I have regrets about buying the Carbide 3D Nomad CNC, there are some positives, such as the free-tier software.
I’ll be putting more time into it, and it seemed like a good idea to get these thoughts and sentiment down.
I can’t do anything about the light duty nature of the machine, but I can rework my expectations and the type of work I throw at it, so that’s what I’ll be doing.
