Quote Originally Posted by Chip Owner View Post
The machine on ebay cuts aluminium fine, all day long, despite being designed for cutting MDF. Nice clean cuts even in thin 1050 sheet.

In comparison to others in similar price bracket, i.e. 60/90 chinese routers, Xcarve and so on, it's far better.

Could the machines be better, yes, could the finish be better, yes but for around £2500k after some basic mods they work well.
Hi Chip,

Sorry but while it may cut aluminum there's a huge difference between scratching and cutting and I now just from looking at the design and build quality that the finish quality and cutting depths etc must be compromised when cutting aluminum.
The gantry is so flimsy that finish quality cannot be great and if any decent DOC was taken it would vibrate like holy hell. Even if using trochoidal (adaptive, i-Machining, etc.) tool paths with constant engagement which take a lower chip load I'd be surprised if the finish wasn't poor because of the high feed rates causing vibrations in the frame and gantry which transfer to the tool.

I know it's not what you want to hear me saying, esp as I suspect with you being located in Cumbria that you might have something to do with this company. But I've built enough machines to know what it takes to cut aluminum properly with a good finish and this machine isn't strong enough IMO. . . . And I'm not even bring rail parallelism and accuracy, etc into the argument which again has a huge impact on finished work.!!