[Involute]

I've been using a benchtop CNC mill (R8 taper) for a number of years as a hobby. The vast majority of my operations are profile cuts, pockets, and hole drilling in aluminum that's, at most, .25" thick, and MDF that's, at most, .5" thick. I never need more than .005" accuracy, which the mill easily provides. The machine offers 14" of X travel, 6" of Y, and 9" of Z. I use a number of software tools for design, but they all end up outputting G code which I run in Mach 3 to drive the machine.

I'm often constrained by the mill's work envelope and find myself increasingly thinking about replacing the mill with a CNC router, which would give me a significant increase in Y travel within the same footprint as the mill. It would also process MDF much faster. I don't know much about these routers, though, so I thought I'd come here to gather some pros and cons. Would it be able to do all the things I mentioned I currently do with my mill? If I ever wanted to work on steel, would I be able to (I assume I'd have to add a coolant system, but Fog Buster seems like it would be well-suited to one of these things)? Any other considerations? Thanks for any tips.

[ger21]

Routers come in all shapes and sizes, from flimsy hobby level machines to heavy industrial machines. Without knowing exactly what you are comparing, it's hard to answer.

[cyclestart]

Is owning a mill and a router an option ?

[awerby]

Forget about milling steel with a router, even a heavy-duty one will have the wrong kind of spindle. But if a router is rigid enough, it should be able to handle aluminum. And it will do a better job on MDF than a mill, or at least do it faster with less dust (assuming it comes with a dust collector). Like Cyclestart implies, it's better to have both, if possible; they do different things. .

[109jb]

Forget about milling steel with a router, even a heavy-duty one will have the wrong kind of spindle. But if a router is rigid enough, it should be able to handle aluminum. And it will do a better job on MDF than a mill, or at least do it faster with less dust (assuming it comes with a dust collector). Like Cyclestart implies, it's better to have both, if possible; they do different things. .

You can of course have different spindles that you can mount on the Z-axis. One for wood and non-ferrous and one for steel.

[dharmic]

Still for hobby work, Involute?

I bought an OmioCNC 6040 machine (the X2200L) a few years ago, about 22" x 14" x 5.5" work envelope. I upgraded the controller (from USB to ethernet) and the deck (from bendy extrusion to solid plate) and added a $20 dual nozzle air carried mister rig. Including the bench/enclosure I made for it and tooling it ran up a total of maybe USD4000.

I still use the little SEIG X2 mill for steel. The Omio will work steel and even stainless but it's slow going, hard on the tooling and machine and you can hear it being unhappy about the whole thing.

Having both is a nice combination.

[ConeGuy]

I think it is really up to your use of a mill or router, but there are not enough info for me to judge on that.
If you go with a router, Thermwood has pretty good price/quality ratio routers for both MDF and aluminum, but of course steel is a different matter.