IS vs Pro

What are the differences between the two from a practical standpoint. A little about my intended use:

I create acrylic equipment for the aquarium industry. Right now I am using a CO2 laser to cut 6mm acylic, and prep the edges with a router table before solvent welding. It is much slower, and I can't get consistent (within a few .001") dimensions, so every set is made as a matched pair (not interchangeable). Although, if I had a cnc router, I plan on working with thicker material and offering a broader product line. This is a high margin, small quantity business, so speed is not my primary concern. I am more concerned with edge quality, dimensional accuracy, and of course longevity of the machine. I seriously doubt I would run the machine more than 20 hours a week. With that in mind, is there much need for the IS over the Pro? Business is starting to pick up and as soon as I can justify it, I plan on getting a 4x8 3 axis gantry. I do this out of my home, so I do not have access to 3 phase, but I do have enough room left to add a few more 240V single phase legs. Finally, I have a standard height garage, would that height cause a clearance problem with a 408 machine?

Plastics can be typically machined with any industrial-type machine near-forever with zero issues.

Our Haas customers doing plastics typically had zero service in 5 years, and thought the machines were "forever".
And were very happy.
Customers using other brands metalworking machines also had similar results of high reliability.

A machine able to do plywood with good results will do plastics much better.
Chip breakage, evacuation, are important.
Static electricity is often important. Install grounding conduits / copper braids.

I did not comment on the specifics since I have no personal or institutional experience.
Better workflow usually comes from bigger machines, more/less always.

If income streams and economics support it, easily, currently, I would always buy the bigger machine.
I would never buy the bigger machine for future work or soft POs with no real payment terms from clients - unless I had spare cash to invest in growth and able to see cash stagnate with zero economic hardship.

Reality - unlike economics school:
If the company has effectively enough cash, and the business is growing well, always buy the bigger machine.
Maybe 2-3% of SMEs.
When You have limited cash, buy the best cheap machine of high economic capacity. This is very hard to measure.

Yea, I figured that might be the case. I was even considering one of the extruded aluminum setups like CNC Router Parts, but I just don't know how rigid they are. For my setup, it may be good enough. I just don't know, and it is hard to get any hands on experience with them. I also like the idea of an ATC for beveling some edges, and smaller cutters for detail work. I could make several units a day by myself if I didn't have so many steps prepping the edges for assembly. On the other hand, a 12-14k DIY gantry sure is allot easier to justify, and could probably get sooner, then a 30K+ commercial unit.

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Originally Posted by tstanley01

What are the differences between the two from a practical standpoint. A little about my intended use:

I create acrylic equipment for the aquarium industry. Right now I am using a CO2 laser to cut 6mm acylic, and prep the edges with a router table before solvent welding. It is much slower, and I can't get consistent (within a few .001") dimensions, so every set is made as a matched pair (not interchangeable). Although, if I had a cnc router, I plan on working with thicker material and offering a broader product line. This is a high margin, small quantity business, so speed is not my primary concern. I am more concerned with edge quality, dimensional accuracy, and of course longevity of the machine. I seriously doubt I would run the machine more than 20 hours a week. With that in mind, is there much need for the IS over the Pro? Business is starting to pick up and as soon as I can justify it, I plan on getting a 4x8 3 axis gantry. I do this out of my home, so I do not have access to 3 phase, but I do have enough room left to add a few more 240V single phase legs. Finally, I have a standard height garage, would that height cause a clearance problem with a 408 machine?

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Contact ShopSabre CNC and they can provide you a true comparison of their products.
They help on this stuff regularly and are the professionals on the product so they will provide more true information on their product and help you choose the right one.

I just got off the phone with them. They were very helpful. The long and short of it was they would both give me identical cut quality, and the only real difference was the speed. He said you can really rip through ply wood with the IS. However, when cutting acrylic, I wouldn't be able to run the IS to its max capability anyways, so I should stick with the pro. I got a quote with ATC, vacuum, phenolic table, retractable alignment pins and and delivery. Now I just need to keep building the business so I can justify it to the wife! It will give me so much more capability over what the CO2 cutter does.