Hello. I am hoping to be guided by the accumulative wisdom possessed by the many members of this forum regards the purchase of my very first CNC router.
Around 18 months ago I started a buisness manufacturing a unique product. I am a joiner and initaly I was roughing out all my profiles then using a bearing guided router to produce all the profiles required. I then invested in hiring the help of a local guy with a CNC machine to design up all me components on CAD in order to cut them on his machine (Needless to say this was a revelation). Since then my buisness has grown substantially and we are spending circa £1000/£2000 a month outsourcing the work. We are now in the position to buy our own machine (hopefully with the aid of a little grant money) but I dont know a great deal about them currently.
We need a machine capeable of cutting 1500mm x 3000mm sheets of ply with auto tool change and a vac bed.
The only machine I am familliar with is the AXZY series machine my freind uses to cut our stuff on so naturally I have approached AXZY for a quote.
To satisfy the orgonisation we are applying for the grant from I have to get a minimum of 2 more quotes, obviously I want to go and actually see the machines aswell to compare them.
We have a maximum budget of between £50/£60k +vat and we deffinately want to buy new.

All advice on this subject is much appreciated