Quote Originally Posted by xchipx View Post
Thoroughly appreciate your replies guys, thanks for the welcomes :)

Right first things first.
No 3 phase. This will be my little garage that just has a standard uk power source.
However size shouldnt matter that much as it will be the only thing in there.
The only problem with the size is that i want it to be inclosed as much as possible when its in operation , perhaps some sort of flexie plastic sheet eclosure and air pump with filters - not sure yet.
But the dust from cutting carbon fibre is lethal so its either that or wear a respirator ( but thats not ideal to do 24/7 )

The size of the sprockets would be no larger than 3" to 6" diameter. Obviously the more i could do in " one run " the better.

2 Things that scare me about an old machine :

1 : The size , having to transport and move it. I don't want someone delivering it and knowing where my " mini workshop " is going to be. At the end of the day its a garage, not secure business premises.

2: An old machine scares me, as converting/modernizing one scares the hell out of me. I wanted to see if i could get an " out of the box " ready setup.

Btw not sure if rileys is still going will have to have a look !
Realistically you're going to want to mill something akin to a hard ali alloy with a working area of some 200 x 200mm minimum. The size alone rules out small mills such as the Syil X2, X3 and even an X5 as all are <160mm which is tight. An X4+ would just about do it but your budget won't (nearer £4000).

More realistically size wise you are looking at the MD25/MD30 Chester/Warco/etc series of machines with a cross travel of 200mm or more (and with 700mm of table you could be machining long parts such as forks) and an appropriate conversion kit..

The Marchant Dice series of routers are OK size wise (500 x 200mm working area) but aren't really sturdy enough and the 1kW spindle isnt up to the milling job unless you take relatively fine cuts.

A little googling shows that many of the commercially available gantry style routers surprisingly (or not) don't list Carbon Fibre as a material they work with (yet do list most plastics and woods). Whether thats an H&S issue i dont know.