[PLOT_Canada]

Hello to all colleagues! I want to draw your attention right away that this is not a commercial advertisement, so I will not provide links or other advertising information.

Let me introduce myself. My name is Victor. I am an entrepreneur from Russia, now I have moved to Canada to develop my startup. I have a production facility in Russia with my partners. We manufacture epoxy granite CNC machine bases. We have developed a production technology from the very beginning, have been doing this for more than one month, and this year we have launched mass production of our product in Russia. The product turned out to be very good and is in great demand even in Russia.
Now I live in Canada, I moved here with my family. Our team has very ambitious goals and we want our product to be known all over the world.

Let me say it again: we are a tech startup. We are still developing without investors and support from any state. All development takes place with your earned money.

Thanks to this topic, I want to figure it out. Should we bring our goods to Canada / USA? As you can imagine, only shipping and customs fees will incur costs, excluding production itself. Therefore, we would not like to carry the goods, not knowing whether there will be a demand for it here.

I really hope that the administration of the forum will be friendly. I am ready to contact you and give proof that we are ordinary guys who love what we do, love to work with our hands and love CNC machines. We do not want to conduct commercial advertising. I want to do market research! And if there really is a demand, then I will order commercial advertising. Thank you for understanding.

Dear colleagues, I would be grateful if you would share your opinion on the question: what will you choose, buy a ready-made base to assemble a machine on it or make a base with your own hands?

I will show you some photos and describe the main characteristics:
Axis stroke: 400x600x200 mm
Geometry accuracy: tolerance 0.03 mm
Weight: 310 kg
Standard pitch of mounting holes 60 mm M6 for 25 rail sizes
Standard size of mounting holes for BK17 and BF17 under M8 for ball screws 25 mm
Overall dimensions (WxDxH): 820x1000x750 mm

With endless respect for this community, Victor

[awerby]

That seems like an interesting product, Victor. But it's not something many people would be able to use. Unless you find a partner capable of incorporating these bases into a finished machine, I think it will be difficult to find enough home-builders of large milling machines to support your production. The question isn't really whether most of us here wouldn't rather buy a pre-made base than make one; it's whether we can afford to do it. Many people on this site, who are probably representative of home-shop machine builders in general, are trying to build what would be very expensive machines very cheaply. Even if your bases were less expensive than conventional cast-iron bases, it seems doubtful that they'd really be cheap enough for the hobbyists here.

Rather than trying to sell them as components, I'd suggest looking for a company that can fit these bases with the rest of the parts that would make them into complete milling machines or machining centers that would meet the specifications of industrial customers, and could be sold as such. Either that, or source the parts and systems yourself, and set up your own company to market them. If they really had a significant price/performance advantage over the mills that are currently produced here (or, more commonly, imported) it seems you'd be able to sell them at a profit, and in sufficient quantities. I'm sure you'll be able to get suggestions here as to what would be desirable in a mid-size mill; which of them you decide to adopt would be up to you.

[PLOT_Canada]

Andrew, Thanks for the detailed answer!
In order not to turn the topic into a commercial advertisement, my answer is: the price is very affordable! People in Russia earn much less than in the United States and Canada. And over the year we have produced more than a dozen for a Russian client. As for the quality, the advantages of polymer concrete over cast iron have long been known. And I think in this section of the forum people are well aware of this.

I would also like to say a few words about the components. We manufacture not only bases for machines. We also produce all parts that cannot be bought in the store (such as rails, carriages, ball screws, and so on). That is, with the help of our products, anyone can assemble a machine that will compete in quality with industrial machines, and its price will be much lower! This is exactly why on this forum many people are looking for a solution - to make a machine no worse than an industrial one, at a much lower price!

I hope that the administration will not scold us if I show one video:
https://youtu.be/_cNYb52N07Q

In the video, we processed steel on a machine that is assembled at our base and from our components. (By the way, we have posted the 3D project of our machine for everyone who wants to open it, the client can carefully study it before buying it)
In the description of the video, I put information about cutting conditions.

And in order not to be unfounded, I roughly calculated how much a similar machine (as in the video) could cost a client in Canada:
CAD 8,000 (our products) + CAD 7,000 (miscellaneous parts) = approximately CAD 15,000. Of course you can invest even more in the machine. Buy a cooler spindle or motors. As well as there is where to save.
What do you say, honestly? What you see in the video - is it expensive for 15,000?