[cerealkiller2]

Hey, I'm new here but have enjoyed looking at everyones home built tables. Like others here, I am intrested in buying or building a table myself. My question is what do you guys think of the practical cnc design, and do you think I could build a similar version 4'X4' for less than $6500 (the starting price on Ebay).

Is there some calculations about motor size, controller amperage, or lead screws, I should know about.

Any helpful comments are welcomed!
Thanks in advance!

[balsaman]

Will this be a cnc router?

Eric

[cerealkiller2]

Hopefully both plasma and router. Haven't started building anything yet. Still in the concept stage! Just wanted to know if you guys think PraticalCNC design is worth using as a model. I don't plan on cutting thick piecesof metal, but do plan on adding additional supports to extend the table to a 4'X8' one day. Is there a problem with flexing, with extruded Al. I was planning on using 8020's (3") Al for the frame and legs.

[balsaman]

What's your budget like? This will help us answer your questions.

Typically a router and a plasma table are too different to do a combo type machine.

Eric

[Magilla422]

On 5/16/05 I had tried to purchase a CNC Cutting Table From Practical CNC at which time I was told that it would be 2 weeks for delivery at which point the time for delivery came and went I called to verify the new ship date at which time the response was "it will ship this week were almost done" this went on for more than 2 months the same story every week, I had after a month and a half had to cancel part of the order so that I could pay my business rent and bills of which they were quick to refund me that part of my money but after no progress in 2 months I called and requested an actual ship date or I was going to have to cancel my order if no response within the next 24 hours to no surprise there was no response, So I called to cancel my order at that point they said they could give me a bottom of the line table and give me some of my money back of which was not a option at this point I had already closed my business doors due to the loss of customers I requested a refund and the answer to that was "we spent the money already on other tables what do you want us to do about it" notice he said "other tables" not mine I was under the impression that they never started building the table at all also I have never received a call from the company and the show no interest in returning my money in a reasonable amount of time the owner of the company refuses to talk with me or respond to any of my request it has now been 3 months since I had Wired the money and is now time to take action against company’s who practice business in this fashion.

[the_paco]

OOUUUCH!!! (nuts)

I hope you'll get refunded... I choosed ShopBot and even with some minor control software problems I AM QUITE HAPPY!!! Their support is UNBELIEVABLE...

From anybody who's looking for commercial CNC router/plasma; thanks for sharing your experience... that is the kind of feedback EVERYBODY's looking.

Good luck to you!


cerealkiller2,

combining both router and plasma can be quite a challenge; how do you plan to deal with woods/plastics and fire?!

As for AL frame; the bigger the better... it is flexy... under machining involved force... and may bend under heat radiations... still depends on much other parameters...

[cerealkiller2]

Sorry to hear about your troble with practical cnc! I ended up purchasing a a K2 2514 machine for the time being. Hopefully, it will help pay for a larger table. But, after hearing your story and not having any manual with the K2, I think I'll try to build the next one.

[dhc]

:cheers: PracticalCNC makes a good machine. problem is (AND ITS A HUGE ONE) dont EVER EVER EVER expect customer service.....oh MAN could i rant about this!

my machine sat for nearly a year before getting any real use ( decided to use it as a plasma because router answers never came ) Joe ( the owner ) is a nice guy but has a huge focus problem.

case in point; i drove there to pick up my unit in person WITH THE EXPRESS INTENT of getting further instruction on router use. HA! 15 minutes after getting there a couple from conneticut were cutting into time i was promised would be for me. he's all over the road and you can never get a slow, methodical answer out of him.

Cant say much for the techno nerds at wincnc most times either ( thats the driver he uses ) they can be really "short" with you and act as if they have better things to do than back up the product.....

id like to hear from ALL of you P-CNC owners Ive since learned a great deal about the guts of this thing but still have a TON O' PROBLEMS to work out.

[cut more]

dhc,
Sorry to hear about your trouble with practical, I purchased a 4x8 router & Plasma from them. I am doing both routing & Plasma with mine. What problems are you having? My table is wobbly which I will be fixing once I have come cash. Right now it is hard to rout a good circle in aluminum, I always seem to get a bit elliptical. I also would like to hear from other practical owners. Maybe someone could start a forum for practical owners to share tips?

[Mariss Freimanis]

They last ordered 60 drives from us and never paid for them. We asked them to send the drives back. They returned 20. I guess 33 cents on the dollar is the best we'll ever recover.

Mariss

[the_paco]

(wedge)

Must feel alike?!

Sorry to hear about this Mariss... at least, I guess you've learned something!?

[dhc]

oooooooo! scarry! looks like we're seeing the start of the end for them huh? in that case we really DO need a support group!

[Mariss Freimanis]

paco,

Actually it's par for the course. I have run my own companies, medium and small (Geckodrive is small because I like that way) since I was 22. An unwritten law of business is 10% of your gross will be slow or difficult to collect. Of that 10%, another 10% will never pay, making 1% of gross unrecoverable. Any fiscal year that number is below 1% is a good one. We have PCNC and a few other characters that insure the number is never 0%. :-)

Mariss

[Scott V]

I have a practical table and the other ebay table is not a clone.

Dave Cress builds them and there is no comparsion between
the Practical table. Dave's is the only same table in that
price range that will do light router and plasma work.
Although I would rather stick with one or the other.

He happens to be straight up about things, un-like
some of the other table builders.

I bought my table one year too soon.
I happy with it now because of Dave Cress at Dyna CNC, Les at Sheetcam,
Tom Caudle, and everybody else that helped me get my table working.
If I would of bought somebody elses, I would not of learned as much about
tables as I now know. I probabaly would of known more about cutting steel by now though.

Marris,
I glad Joe picked your parts because that part of the Practical machine
is top quality. Too bad he has to stiff the good people out there.

Scott

[Mariss Freimanis]

Scott,

Thanks; that reminds me: I thought I heard somewhere the heatsinking for our drives was way inadequate on the PCNC machines. Please check the temperate of the drive by hand after the machine has run for a while. If they are uncomfortably hot to the touch then more aggressive heatsinking is in order. Chronically running any electronic devices hot shortens their life.

Mariss

[Scott V]

Thanks,
I check that.
Dave Cress told me some of the stuff to watch out for and
some of it was with the box. I am sure most of the issues would
show up when trying to router with that machine. I used all
my router 80/20 parts to stiffen the table up for holding steel.
I seen all the lost steps when some guys trying to router
with that table.

Scott

[dhc]

post your contact info M so i can add it to my info ( where to go when things go wrong )

[dhc]

while im thinking about it maybe the crowd could help me with a problem that brought me here in the 1st place:

my set up
P-CNC table using WIN cnc 2.1
Corell Draw 10 with output in the AUTOCAD R10 setting ( about the only setting that seems to work )

heres the problem:

currently i'm attempting to plasma cut a 3 foot X 4 foot pannel in a SPIDER WED design.

lately ive noticed ( especially on larger cuts ) the lines look fine in corell but are never the same in some spots on the final DXF.. points that should over lap are gapped open, lines that should be paralel are not ( some are...weird! )

it's aggrivating the crap outta me! it appears to be somewhere between the corel export and the win cnc conversion..... any help would save my remaining sanity :drowning:

[Scott V]

while im thinking about it maybe the crowd could help me with a problem that brought me here in the 1st place:

my set up
P-CNC table using WIN cnc 2.1
Corell Draw 10 with output in the AUTOCAD R10 setting ( about the only setting that seems to work )

heres the problem:

currently i'm attempting to plasma cut a 3 foot X 4 foot pannel in a SPIDER WED design.

lately ive noticed ( especially on larger cuts ) the lines look fine in corell but are never the same in some spots on the final DXF.. points that should over lap are gapped open, lines that should be paralel are not ( some are...weird! )

it's aggrivating the crap outta me! it appears to be somewhere between the corel export and the win cnc conversion..... any help would save my remaining sanity :drowning:

Have you did the Sheetcam upgrade?

Download a trial version and export your Corel into a HPGL then into Wincnc.

[jayhawksgn]

We run a P-CNC table as well, the 5x10 unit with the plasma option. We haven't used the plasma cutter with the table yet but have done quite a bit of routering.

My boss picked up our table while he was on vacation up that way, and after setting it up, and spending several weeks back and forth with them on a technical issue, Joe hopped on a plane and came down to fix the problem. It ended up being the PC we were using (DO NOT use a AMD based system with the WinCNC boards).

Since that issue was resolved we haven't had a problem with the router until last night. I am having a problem with the tool measure switch. I haven't used it since we were playing with the machine when we got it so I think its just user error, me not remembering the procedure correctly. But I have been on the phone with Josh there (hes the technical computer guy) and he is looking into the problem.

I do agree with the other post about Joe, great guy, but I think he has got too much going. It isn't the first time that we have dealt with a company that only had one or two people who you could actually deal with to get an actual answer, everyone else there is just a waste of time to talk too.

If anyone else is doing 3D work with their machine and wouldn't mind emailing the procedure for using the tool measure switch I would appreciate it. I won't be hearing back from Josh till Tuesday now, kind of wanted to do some work this weekend.

Matthew
Jayhawk Signs