I am thinking about getting into CNC and was wondering what I should look for in a laptop to support Carbide Create and the process for connecting to the CNC…
I run an old Microsoft Surface Pro on a dock for extra USB ports. Never an issue in 3 years. I also run Vectric Aspire on it, and link them with my design comuter via local network wifi. This is to prove that you really don’t need much to run the CNC. Design is a little more serious… not because the old computer can’t do it, but because it is kind of slow.
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You need something which meets the system requirements as noted on the download pages:
Motion adds the need to have a spare USB port when power is connected, and Create adds the need to be 64-bit.
For a shop computer, a fanless (sealed) tablet makes a lot of sense (and there’s also the option of a Raspberry Pi 4 (though that won’t run Create)).
Some folks get rugged laptops as better suited to the rigors or a shop.
One consideration for Carbide Create is that you need a mouse or a trackpad to zoom in/out — pinch/zoom on a touchscreen won’t work — other than that though, it works well w/ a stylus in my experience.
For Windows almost anything would work. It does not take much to run the Shapeoko. On the design side for Carbide Create the minimum as @WillAdams posted above would work. You dont need a super computer for either but obviously a more powerful one would work well. I just ordered my grand daughter a new laptop from Amazon. It is an I5. I looked at an I7 but the prices were from $800-1200.00.
The one I ordered is an I5 with 20gb Memory and 2TB SSD Drive. I have several HP laptops over years and they have performed well.
Here is the one I ordered. It was a little over $500.00
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CJPHD3VH/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1
I have bought some small form factor Dell desktop type computers on ebay that were very reasonable. However the laptop is somewhat more versatile because it is portable.
Some people like to design in their office and carry the laptop to the shop. Having a dedicated one for the shop is great but you have to be able to transfer the c2d files to that machine. That can be done several ways. A usb drive, cloud, network attached hard drive etc…
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