Your thoughts on the AR1200 from Machinery & Electrical

Hi Franco, I think that you are mistaken when you say that you cannot get an industrial machine for £6K. If you can find the space and have access to a 3ph supply the older industrial machines represent fantastic value for money IMO. Chances are that if you do buy such a machine it will come with a CAD/CAM system, tool holders and probably an automatic tool changer. I bought an old (1999) SCM 120 on ebay (not-working) had to spend some time and money (still ended up within your budget) and although it is a bit old, I think it is a fantastic machine, very heavy duty and hopefully will last for many years to come. You do of course need space and a 3phase supply, but it may even be worth considering renting a small unit if it is for commercial use. Good luck with whatever you decide. G.

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Originally Posted by GEOFFREY

Hi Franco, I think that you are mistaken when you say that you cannot get an industrial machine for £6K. If you can find the space and have access to a 3ph supply the older industrial machines represent fantastic value for money IMO. Chances are that if you do buy such a machine it will come with a CAD/CAM system, tool holders and probably an automatic tool changer. I bought an old (1999) SCM 120 on ebay (not-working) had to spend some time and money (still ended up within your budget) and although it is a bit old, I think it is a fantastic machine, very heavy duty and hopefully will last for many years to come. You do of course need space and a 3phase supply, but it may even be worth considering renting a small unit if it is for commercial use. Good luck with whatever you decide. G.

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Agree with Geoffrey but you also have to be careful because you can easily run into trouble with machines that use dedicated bespoke software or hardware that is difficult to replace or very limiting in what can be done regards software, esp when it comes to 3D work.
In this instance then you nearly always have to convert the machine to run on modern hardware and controllers so you can use modern software and keep machine running. This does require a pretty high level of experience and intimate knowledge of control software setup, esp if the machine is equiped with numatic's and automatic tool changers etc.! . . . . . Not something I'd recommend for someone with only operating experience or newbie to CNC.

Hi GEOFFREY. Oh I completely understand that you can get a used machine for under £6k but I'm a little concerned with some aspects of this such as JAZZCNC mentioned. I realise I'm going to get less for my money by buying a new machine but at least I should be able to get up and running fairly quickly with it and it will (hopefully) have some form of warranty/support. Once I have my own machine I should hopefully be able to get to grips and understand the hardware side of things more and a second larger used machine could well be an option in the future.

For now, I only have a garage to work from with a 230v supply. I'm hoping to move to a bigger place within the next three to five years and hopefully build a larger workshop but for now this is all I have. I really don't want to wait much longer though and I really would like to start developing some products this year. Just for reference, this is an (old) photo of my garage/work shop. It's not quite so tidy at the moment however :topsy_turvy:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...arageproj3.jpg

If anyone does have any suggestions for new machines then I would love to hear them. From what I've read Marchant Dices machines are not too good and neither are Stoney CNCs. The only other ones I've really seen are the [Heiz T-1400/105] and the [EXEL CNC SL1314 Pro] although I'm not sure what they are like and both are probably going to be over budget by the time everything is accounted for.

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Originally Posted by george uk

Yes sorry i ment 2k for a home build of that,

I just presumed, thats why i asked him what he generally wants it for, hobby or work or industrial output...

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There's no way you could build that for 2k especially when home build suggests retail prices and VAT

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Originally Posted by EddyCurrent

There's no way you could build that for 2k especially when home build suggests retail prices and VAT

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Agree with you Eddy to build it exactly like this with all the trimmings etc then it will be hard to do at that money and even if did it would be low spec, which this machine probably is for the base start machine. IE low spec drives, parallel port controlled etc. I suspect to get this machine with a decent spec then upgrades will be suggested and offered. This is exactly what Exel and lot of others do with there machine's they offer a base machine to attract then suggest upgrades or folks find out the hard way and buy base machine only to see it's under performing and then get stung for upgrades.!! . . (this pisses me off)

To build this machine to a decent spec and do a proper Job of it will require closer to 3K and lots of time. It's very easy for folks who have never built a machine to under estimate what's involved and I'd say 95% of builders always under estimate the TOTAL cost's and 99.9% the amount of time needed.

Franco: The excel machines are OK I've worked on one and I build a Desktop router design that is very similair(not copied I was building mine before them) so can tell you 100% the design works well for routers. But like you say you won't get much from them at this size for 6K and it will be closer to 10K with the correct spec.
The Heiz machine I don't know much about as I've never had hands on one but from what I see I'm not overly impressed and they are rediculously over priced for what you get. The desktop version you could easily build for under 2K.

Mechant dice machines I won't even waste the skin on my fingers typing about. . .Lol

I have to ask JAZZ why he lumps low-spec and parallel port together. I know I only have a hobby machine from MD and I am vastly dissatisfied with it, but parallel port works OK within the (low) capabilities of my current machine - that is if the PCF07343 controller they used hadn't gone on the fritz. Is there some magic with usb motion controllers that makes something great happen ?

BTW the MD company motto is "UNUM NATUS PERPARVIS" which translates as - one born .......

Hi
I will post up this list when i put my pc on later tonight. On my phone at the mo. and i do think that one is doable for around 2k. But only if you have some experience and the right tools.

Re industrial cnc

Have looked at lots of theze over the past year. Like the otheres say. Most of them need the brains replacing . Although if you take the time to learn how they operate. They can be good. Its size that would be your problem for the cheeper industrial cncs are usualy massive. And waigh tons,

I see on bidspotter a few weeks ago a wadkin cnc that was reletivly small moving table fix head design would have fitted at the back.

But. There are some great cncs self built on here. Jonathons is a great example. Pluss many many more And would probebly fit your needs perfectly. For the budget you have. Maybe look at pricing up getting the bits made that you can not do. And do the rest of the build yourself.

Hi george, I look forward to the list, thanks!

Yeah an industrial machine isn't really going to be an option at the moment. I would love to build one but I simply don't have the time and most of the tooling required to make one. I have a full time job as well as working most evenings/weekends for people and I also have a long list of projects I need to finish for myself so at the moment I can't afford to invest a lot of time into making one which is why I'm willing to pay a premium for my first machine to get me up and running.

I looked into buying one of these AR machine about a year ago, I have never seen one in the flesh but I though it looked like a lot of machine for the money. A simple design using decent components, the only stand out issue is the single ballscrew to move the gantry, that was alway a consern in my mind.

It just looks like a well made diy machine and something you could prob improve upon over time if need be. Worth a look, in fact if you phone them up they have customers around the country who are willing to show their machine to potential customers.

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Originally Posted by cropwell

I have to ask JAZZ why he lumps low-spec and parallel port together. I know I only have a hobby machine from MD and I am vastly dissatisfied with it, but parallel port works OK within the (low) capabilities of my current machine - that is if the PCF07343 controller they used hadn't gone on the fritz. Is there some magic with usb motion controllers that makes something great happen ?

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Well no one with any sense would go to the expense of buying a motion control card and running nasty cheap drives or Breakout board with them.! Equaly no one would buy servo's and run them with a parallel port at 25Khz.

The parallel port does work ok within reason. But when you get to wanting higher feed rates with higher resolution to give smoother motion then it starts to struggle. 25Khz just isn't fast enough and increasing the Kernal speed to gain extra pulses is increasing the chances for error and putting strain on the already much tweaked parallel port driver. This can lead to miss steps and allsorts of weird shit happenings.!!

I realise looking at the surface it appears Motion control cards are expensive luxury's but after you have experienced the difference you never will go back to the parallel port. The difference when matched to decent BOB and drives is night and day to parallel port, Motors run smoother, performance increases and missed steps etc when pushed hard become a thing of the past. PC and Mach's workload is greatly reduced as the Motion control card now does all the number crunching, this reduces chances of Mach3 locking up which is common when pushing the Kernal speed up and high feed rates.
Gone are the restrictions on which PC is suitable and how good the Paralle port is or needs to be.! Now you can use lower spec PC Even Laptops and run them thru a network if you like when using Ethernet(wouldn't advise it thou) Plus you can safely locate the PC and control further away from machine without worrying about cable length dropping signals.!
Usb motion control cards perform just as good but they still have some cable length restrictions and some can be affected by noise more(IE: Usb Smooth stepper)

So lower spec and parallel port do go together as you wouldn't go High spec on everything else and still run Parallel port. It would be like buying a ferrari and only using half it's gears.! . . . . . . Equally you wouldn't buy a ferrari Engine and put it in a low spec Lada and expect it to beat a Porche.!