[jsteel2200]

I own a small jewelry company and I want to start making custom engraved pieces. Im good with computers, I know nothing about cnc or engravers but from what little info I could gather a Vision 810 will both engrave and cut out designs in soft metals like sterling silver which is great. The only problem is those cost 8000.00 new and I don't have anywhere close to that to spend on this project. I ended up finding an old vision 810 for sale for 500.00 that's supposed to be in working order but It does not come with software and I'm wondering what my options are or if the machine is even worth buying. Is there a different route I should go? Im scared to death of the Chinese machines i've looked at but I'm kind of scared of this old Vision engraver too. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[routalot]

What sort of software is missing from the bargain machine?If its motion control software it could be a dealbreaker or you could go down the road of learning how to install and calibrate something.If you intend to create anything you will have to develop some proficiency in designing the object and then generating a toolpath.Once more,software will feature and you will have to acquire some and become familiar with it.I see two kinds of bad outcome that might come to pass;one you buy the bargain machine and can't get it to go or two you find a way to get the working version and can't afford the software to produce anything.A quick search told me that the Vision machine needs a software dongle to run and if your bargain machine doesn't have that and the dedicated software suite it will be a doorstop unless you want to learn about reconfiguring the machine to accept different control software.It doesn't have to cost anything to do that with GRBL or LinuxCNC being freely available,on the other hand the time spent learning the ins and outs is time that you could have spent operating your business to make the money to buy the complete machine.If you like a challenge,maybe the old machine and a retrofit would give you a useful machine and a ton of knowledge about it.

I think you are probably right to be wary of the low cost Chinese machines and if you search this site you will find several accounts of them being supplied with cracked or demo versions of Mach 3 software and while it has it's adherents its a pretty old piece of software.The spindles may also be a bit fast for use with metals.You might need to research tooling and speeds/feeds for your rather specialised needs to see what would be optimal.

Since you specifically mention engraving, I would recommend downloading F-engrave which is a wonderful piece of software that Scorch distributes for free.It will give you the chance to try out the process of adjusting settings,importing images,exploring different styles of working and even if you don't cut a thing you will learn a lot.

[jsteel2200]

Thank you so much for taking the time to help! The seller of the old machine has a version of software they're willing to sell and they've been using a serial to usb converter to run it. I'm going to contact vision Monday and see what their advice is. I'm downloading F-engrave right now.