Designer with a plan looking for advice

[bigstu67]

Please allow me to introduce myself !
I’m a designer working in cardboard & wood – www.coolcardboard (http://www.coolcardboard)furniture.com (http://www.coolcardboardfurniture.com) – based near Banbury. I’m considering taking the plunge and getting myself an 8’ x 4’ CNC Router Flatbed. Ideally 240V. Will be cutting v. complex shapes in cardboard and hoping to do fitted kitchens from wood on a more commercial tip. I’m pretty new to this with a rudimentary understanding of the machine & technology. Ideally a budget of £4-5K but can stretch to 8K with new machine. I’m considering 3 options


Buy New – I’m looking at RoutOut Z90SL. I’m going to visit them in a fortnight would much appreciate what I should be looking for when I’m there during demo’s. Also anyone any experience with these machines .
Buy Second hand – what are the pitfalls/ advantages of this ?
Build my own – Hang Fire ! Having done a bit of research my approach to this would be to hire one of your guys expertise & experience to assist with the build – having lurked on the forums here I can see there are many pitfalls should be open to any of your thoughts on this and is it worth all the work financially compared to buying

Open to any thoughts or suggestions as I progress.

[jcb121]

That's a pretty decent size, I'm currently building 4' x 4' steel frame machine.

if you're doing kitchens, I imagine the countertops will be veneered hardboard? this is a pain to cut and blunts tools super quickly. Avoid it IMO.

for cardboard, extrusion and belt driven wouldn't be too bad, but I'd rather go for something out of steel :)

[saxonhawthorn]

For commercial work you have to supply and work with whatever material the customer wants, which is not necessarily what you'd use yourself. I don't doubt that any material with resin in it will blunt tool tips PDQ, but that's not a reason for avoiding it. "He who pays the piper ..." The cost of replacements is simply factored into the price of the job.