Router recommendation for University

[Fivetide]

FiveTide,

Trust me been down the learning curve the hard way myself. To the OP, seriously for the money you are talking about; not only could you build a better machine then the one you pointed too but would also have the practical engineering experience that will do you well out in the real world. There is a lot of crap coming out these days and what folks are saying in their ads should land them in court.

As far as getting banned, hope not, but I can point out with experience and engineering facts where these machines are crap and are lying their back sides off.

Michael

I know what you are saying, the thing is I joined the community to get advice post CNC, I’m getting old now and I have come to the conclusion that I map the path of learning out first, I have a goal and to get there can I cut out things that I don’t need to learn.? If I was to build CNC’s to sell then of course I should learn to make one , but I’m not going down that route, I’m only interested in the end product the CNC gives me, and I doubt I will need more than one CNC machine every 18 months. So to that end I will buy one saving me loads of time, and then can concentrate on the real object of using the machine to accomplish my goals. I don’t mean to hijack the thread but maybe what is needed is a machine to teach how to use it then , I would build one, but at the same time if there are engineering students that could gain some knowledge from building one then you have sated to sets of ambitions and that can only be good.

[i2i]

remember that the machine they choose MUST BE SAFE to use in an educational environment.

[gavztheouch]

I bought one of these new for about £1400 plus vat new. Its a lot more solid than I was expecting being mainly constructed of aluminium profile.

3 Axis A3 Ballscrew Assembled CNC Router Package

I had to do the electronics and mach 3 side of things myself but I doubt I would be able to build the mechanicals for what I paid and the machine does everything I need it to. It recently cut some Aluminium tooling plate, took a while but it got there.

What sort of products are you looking to make? That would dictate what sort of machine you should be looking at.

Denfords are overpriced, some of the little routers/mills are pants but their VMC's like the triac look rather good.

Software is an important factor as well as you don't wont students being put off by having to spend weeks and weeks learning a toolpath generating program like mastercam. Something like cut2d and cut3d are cheap and you can learn them in about 30mins with some guidence from somebody in the know. They are however a lot less powerfull than some of the big cam programs, something that falls between them is Rhino 3d with the Rhino cam plugin. What CAD program does the Uni have? If you have something like solidworks you may be able to get a cam plugin?