Hi All.

I'm Rob, I work for a set building company near Oxford and I'm responsible for the "art department" meaning all the graphics, visual design, painting and finishing on the jobs we do.

The reason I have signed up here is to look more into creating/obtaining a very basic wood routing CNC set-up for the business. Currently we do make use of CNC routing - mostly 18mm ply as it goes - which is outsourced and comes with all the drawbacks and advantages that entails.

One of the first things I did here was to buy a vinyl cutter machine so that I had the flexibility to experiment and do small bits of work on demand as opposed to sending to to somebody else and waiting for it to come back.

I'm thinking about doing something similar for a flat-bed CNC router, which ideally would accommodate up to 10x5 ply sheets, so I'm here to glean some info, and see whether it's something we could do on a (very) small budget.

Currently I design using SketchUp and Adobe Illustrator so I'm familiar with the principles of vector design. I'm hoping this is useful and transferable to the world of CNC.

Cheers!