On 29-30 August, makers from every corner of the community, hobbyists and professionals alike, came together in Atlanta for the first-ever Carveco User Group. Two days of talks, demos, games and a lot of hands-on making at Guardian Works.
Carveco is not just software, it’s a community, and over two days in Atlanta that’s exactly what it felt like. For most of the year, that community mostly lives online: comment sections, forum threads, clips passed between people who’ve been talking to each other for years without ever actually meeting. Atlanta was the first real chance to close that gap and to put a face to a name.
That mattered as much for people running big operations as it did for people working alone in a home shop. Over the weekend, solo makers stood shoulder to shoulder with people running manufacturing operations, and the software was the thing that made them equals.
“You have people in this room that do stuff like me, in their own shop, and then other people that employ 800 employees and have this massive operation. We’re all using the same software, just in very different ways.”
— Hamilton Dilbeck, Content Creator
Saturday: talks, demos and a full room
TV’s Tony The Tool opened the weekend as MC, handing over to Carveco’s MD, Robert Newman, for a welcome and a look ahead at the two days to come.
From there, Leighton Ashcroft and Tim Phelps ran through what’s new in Carveco, walking the room through upcoming features with live demos of the tools themselves.
“You’re getting to chat with the people who make the decisions for the software specifically.”
— Scott Saari, Sienci Labs
The rest of Saturday’s sessions covered a lot of ground. Leigh Northrup spoke on bringing CNC into the classroom. Hamilton Dilbeck covered getting more out of Carveco’s AI tools. Robert Newman ran a session on how professional industries, from coin minting to confectionery to automotive, use Carveco day to day. Jen Dunn taught sculpting and refining AI-generated models, and Vernon Hinkle and Chad Bookman shared their approach to mastering inlays. There were hands-on sessions too: Tips and Tricks for the Maker in the morning, and its counterpart for more experienced users, Tips and Tricks for the Pro, later on.
Outside on the terrace, a giant ice wall gave everyone the chance to grab a tool and carve their own name, or whatever else came to mind, straight into the ice. Elsewhere in the venue, a rotating set of large-scale ice sculptures brought real theatre to the space across the weekend, including a life-size British phone box on Saturday, replaced on Sunday by a striking King’s Guard figure designed using Carveco’s AI tools. For a room mostly used to working in wood, plastic and metal, seeing that same level of detail carved into ice was something most people hadn’t seen before.
Saturday afternoon brought the Carveco Cup, a game show that put some of the best-known names in the CNC making community head to head on stage. It turned out to be one of the loudest, funniest parts of the whole weekend.
The day wrapped with a live Q&A. Robert Newman, Robert Simunic, Tim Phelps and Leighton Ashcroft took questions from the floor.
Sunday: carving, competition and closing out
Sunday opened with a live ice carving demonstration from Aaron Costic, a Team USA gold medal ice carver. Working from a rough CNC-cut block, he carved it into a finished sculpture in front of a room that had gone quiet watching him do it, all in about ten minutes. He talked through how years of practice had taught him to control not just his tools, but where the ice itself goes as he works, a lesson he demonstrated by sending a spray of it straight over our CEO.
From there, Cody Elkins of Jenny Bits ran a session on choosing the right tooling for the job, and Jason Woodruff walked through building 3D models from vectors in Carveco Maker Plus.
Then came Makers versus Carveco: a team of Carveco staff against a team of makers in a chaotic gameshow that got a little too competitive at points. Robert Newman sat down for an expert insight panel with representatives from the Sunshine Mint and Datron to talk about how Carveco is used across their industries.
The weekend closed with the Finishing Pass, hosted by Tony The Tool with a farewell from Robert Newman. That’s when the Big Chip Hunt winner was announced.
The hunt had run across the whole weekend: people searching the venue for hidden poker chips carved with team members’ faces. The jackpot winner was awarded a Onefinity CNC machine and a 100″ TV, but instead of keeping it, she chose to donate the CNC to a local community project and gave the TV straight to one of the venue’s own bar staff, a gift the team drove over and delivered in person the moment the event wrapped.
Moments like that told us more about this community than any stat could.
What people took away
“It’s such a supportive network of people that are genuinely excited for each other.”
— Morgan Hop, Onefinity CNC
Talking to people afterward, the excitement about what’s coming next for the software came up again and again, especially the new AI tools previewed over the weekend. But ask anyone what actually made the weekend, and it wasn’t any single talk or demo. It was the conversations in between: at the bar, on the terrace, in the gaps between sessions, catching up with people who’d only ever been usernames before.
“Just to hang out for a weekend with all of our friends, that’s why we do it.”
— Tim Phelps, Carveco’s Product Experience Specialist
We’re already thinking about what comes next. If this first one was anything to go by, it won’t be the last.
With thanks to our community partners
