Production grade CNC router Vs Homebuilt CNC router advice

[SweetAs]

Cheers for the replies. Its very much appreciated!!

Jazzcnc - Could you enlighten me on the design flaws of those machines please? In terms of the build I'm not too concerned if we are being honest. I am a Surveyor by trade and build tools / renovate cars in my spare time so I have a good eye for detail. I also understand what I'm getting in terms of trade off for saving money on the machine but thanks for the advice. I will spend the next few days reading up on info and build logs to get an idea of what I am trying to achieve.

Greeny - Cheers for that. It was a LONG day in the workshop yesterday so Im putting it down to the tiredness of not picking up on that. Good eyes lol. Thank you very much for the link, that was just what I needed.

Gerry - Point taken. You are right and in all fairness I would complete the rectangular / square shapes on the saws as it is so quick and easy.

[Boyan Silyavski]

The Stoney CNC Axiom looks right priced for what it is. Obviously an industrial sized half sheet / 4x4ft or 1250x1250/ CNC will be differently priced.

Money wise 3000 will be price of the components for a 60x90cm machine. Not bigger for that money. My signature first build could be done for that money. Industrial grade machine with servos and so will be ~8000 in parts. And that if you are clever and dont make mistakes. But the result will be a superb machine in its class.

The time spend though will be much more than you could imagine.

In your scenario, i would buy one ready, or even better somebody from forum make one for you. One reason being - unfortunately no good plans on internet. My first build is open sourced so drawings a free in the Open source section. I am seriously contemplating starting to sell plans for my big machine. In fact i sold to some people redesigning it for their specific purpose. In reality the plan i could give for free, the support is what it costs.

[Neale]

Just as another data point, a friend of mine who runs a one-man signmaking business recently bought one of these, although his had a T-slot rather than vacuum bed. He found Acctek pretty good to work with; he agreed a spec for the machine via Skype, and he received exactly what he had specified. Cast iron and steel frame, ballscrews, profile rails, water-cooled 2.2KW spindle, USB interface to Mach3. It's Chinese: there are more than a few rough edges, and it needed a little bit of work to get it set up and running (things like a limit switch trigger had come loose and needed readjustment). He used a UK-based shipping agent to handle collection and delivery, and the whole thing cost around £3K. Would have been less but the Brexit vote happened during negotiations and the pound slumped. However, from his point of view, it saved a lot of time in building his own, and to be honest did not cost that much more than buying decent components would have cost. It's not the greatest machine on the planet but it's installed, working, and easily earning its keep. It mainly does text engraving on signs, and is also used for cutting hinge and lock recesses, joints for noticeboard cabinets, things like that.

[JAZZCNC]

Jazzcnc - Could you enlighten me on the design flaws of those machines please?

The design flaws are with the Linked machine you showed. Single rail on gantry, Weakly supported gantry, too tall and narrow Z axis, Lack of support on bed frame. These are the main ones which are not little issues and define the machines abilty's.

The other's I won't get into too deep because as caused me troubles in the past but what I will say to you and others "Boyan" need to Look beyond the gloss and the covers then you'll see design issues that shouldn't be there in machine costing this much money.!! . . . . To highlight my point those with experience look at this pic and tell me whats less than ideal.?


On the panel cutting front then it wouldn't be big deal to design Z axis in such way that Saw could be fixed along side spindle so have the best of both worlds.!! .. . . . . . It's all possible with bit of thought and common sense.

[Washout]

Oooh a where's Wally competition?

I think Wally may have run off with the rest of the Z axis plate for the motor mount and the other set of bearing blocks that should be on it...

[JAZZCNC]

Oooh a where's Wally competition?

I think Wally may have run off with the rest of the Z axis plate for the motor mount and the other set of bearing blocks that should be on it...

That's one but there's another thing missing.?

[njhussey]

OOoooooo is that the ballscrew connected to a lovejoy coupler (and therefore directly to a stepper) with no AC bearings I see before me??!!

[JAZZCNC]

OOoooooo is that the ballscrew connected to a lovejoy coupler (and therefore directly to a stepper) with no AC bearings I see before me??!!

We have Winner.. (shared with Washout)
There actually is Fixed bearing at other end but still it's not good design and shouldn't be like that on machine costing that much money. These machines use smoke and mirrors and people need to start looking deeper to see the real truth.!

[SweetAs]

haha love it.

So come on then Jazz...point me in a good direction?

Ive been having a look through some of the build logs. I like the look of this one http://www.mycncuk.com/threads/6988-routercnc_MK3

I feel I have a few long days of looking through build logs and the forums to get some sort of idea of parts that I want to look at. Happy days!!

[TheDarkKnight]

We have Winner.. (shared with Washout)
There actually is Fixed bearing at other end but still it's not good design and shouldn't be like that on machine costing that much money. These machines use smoke and mirrors and people need to start looking deeper to see the real truth.!

I had intended writing an intro post first but there's so many great posts in the intro section alone as I got distracted

Jazzcnc - I have no links with Axiom cnc machines and have never used one, but I do however want to point out that your comment about the coupler layout on this machine in question is perfectly fine and commonplace now in industry. I have seen them used on machines and automated equipment ranging from $80K, to $3.8M, and ranging from locations such as Foxconn in China, Ferrari in Italy, and onto all the large furniture manufacturers in San Francisco.

The layout performs the same in testing as the conventional layout, is cheaper, easier to assemble, cuts down on spare part inventory, is more compact and it also cuts down on inertia. The fixed end can use either a double row bearing, or 2 pairs of angular contact bearings depending on precision required.
The layout also has the added benefit of having to only machine one datum surface for the single end bearing assembly - a welded or bolted tab being all that is necessary on the opposite end to locate motor. Slotted holes are often used on this tab to tram in the screw parallelism in relation to the rails.

Instead of saying ''shouldn't be like that on machine costing that much money'', you should be saying "I'm delighted to see it feature on a machine costing so little money" - whatever that cost is

I would expect to see this layout more commonplace as time goes by as it spills from industry down into the pro user/hobby market.

Below is just one example of the layout on an industrial cnc. There are many more that can be found too.



Just because you haven't seen something before doesn't mean its bad

Anyways....best get up that intro post eh!!

TDK.