[p-j]

I'm looking to build/buy a 4x8 table and need some advice.

I have it narrowed down to the precision plasma 4x8 patriot or the Bulltear 4x8 gantry kit (fab the table myself)

I wanted to ask opinions on the positives and negatives of each kit.

What I will use it for is hobby/part-time work. mostly 3/8" thick plate or less with ym PM65. Both use Candcnc.com electronics, and have the same height control. I plan to add a scribe for sure.

Both use mach 3/sheetcam

The benifits to the precision is I can buy a scribe kit, however on the bulltear I will have to fab one. The bull tear however *looks* beefier.

So I guess what I would like to hear is any input on which table you would buy?

Also, this probably should be in another section but what CAD or drawing software is effective but user friendly to export to sheetcam or mach 3?
I have no cad experience, but I'm not a idiot either, I half thought about buying torchmates Cad software, but I can't tell if it exports the right code for mach3.

Thanks for any help, it's greatly appreciated.

[limekyle19]

I have bought the 4x8 patriot from Ron and I was a little scared on the strength of the table but after looking at in person and I knew it would handle a full 1'' thick sheet 4x8 no problem. Its very well built and strong. The pictures due not do the table justice! I also bought the scribe and router mount from Ron and couldn't be happier!

I was to going to build my own table but decided that after cost of material and paint and such that it was cheaper to just buy one that was ready to cut!

As far as cad software I would recommend Autocadd 2010. But you can use other forums of cadd software and such.

[p-j]

Well I ordered a 4x8 patriot from tensor today, we'll have to see. I'm sure I'll have lots of questions once this thing shows up.

[citizen bidet]

Regarding cad as long as whatever you use can output a dxf mach can handle it. I have the Torchmate cad but I draw almost everything in corel and then use TM for tool pathing and nesting.

Bulltear are getting rave reviews everywhere I look at the moment.

[DareBee]

Draftsight is kicking the butt of the 2d CAD market AND it is FREE

[Torchhead]

CAD is great for drawing brackets and mechanical parts. Where you run into problems is when someone asks you (or you decide) to mix some vector clipart or to do some "artsy" stuff like wrap a windows font around a circle or arc. Then you need a true Drawing program like CorelDraw or Adobe illustrator (Inkscape is free but somewhat more limited for mechanical drawing) All of those will let you import most types of VECTOR artwork and to bring in bitmaps (photos, images, scans) and hand trace over them or use the auto-trace. If all you ever intend to do is simple shape cutting than CAD will do it and you have a wide choice of everything from free to thousands of dollars. The real key is the CAM package (SheetCAM TNG) and it s ability to take a drawing and let you define HOW you want it cut including what the plasma settings are for that material. The TM software won't do that for you. Get your table setup and working and use the MACH and SheetCAM TNG. There are a bunch of free artsy designs on the software CD (most are hand traces I did over the years) and there is a free version of inkscape on the CD you can use to import the designs and play with them and then take them straight to SheetCAM from the native SVG format. Get it working in basic mode than upgrade the SheetCAm and install our DCC features and check out the new level of automation you can have in plasma cutting.

TOMcaudle
www.CandCNC.com