First machine - what to get (~6k budget)

[Doddy]

There's a Bungard on eBay at the moment - don't know anything about it but it's on a Buy-Out for less than the last one that I bid a £1k on (though that one had a ATC).

PCBs give a bunch of problems - high speed spindles with little run-out, high rigidity (but coupled with no requirement for large Z-travel), high accuracy, high precision. some of these are incompatible with your other goals, so whatever machine you go for you might have to compromise.

Can you not consider perhaps two machines?

[magicniner]

Surface mapping is a chumps game, surface following engraving spindle noses are available, used with a sprung spindle and chip wash/air there is no reason to know where a surface is within a couple of mm in order to achieve an exact cutting depth across a large area,
Regards,
Nick

[DMW]

Thank you for the replies!

I will seriously look at that Bungard Doddy - thanks for the tip! It sounds like 2 machines is the way to go for me.

Cheers

[donkeyot]

Hi DMV i have a prototools Heiz S720 really love the machine and did some mods on it too, really nice machine but you may be looking for something with a proper sprung spindle nose to control depth of cut. Have a look at BZT.de too they are really good machines. The controller can be a problem with these machines, particularly driving them from the parallel port, and a great bit of hardware is the UC100 from cnc drive which does a great job! All the best Nick. Dual drive on Y axis is great, i machine aluminium with mine, and if you take the time and skim your scarf board you can get 0.1 mm accuracy over a large area without spindle nose.