[CHedge]

Hi all,

Hoping someone can provide some advice in relation to what CNC might work for our small business.
My partner and I, run a design business, currently specialising in bespoke laser engraved and cut jewellery. In the process of both building the medium choices (thicker woods and alloys) and products (want to move into custom wall art). We have been investigating use of a CNC router to do so. My problem is that there are a myriad of options out there, so I’m hoping some of you might be able to point us in the right direction.

We prefer the following.
-something which has good reliability and good support. I.e. no cheap Chinese knock offs
- has fine precision capacity across larger projects up to 1m as as smaller projects <5cm
-Has a good user interface (Mac compatible) that works well with vector based designs.

At this stage I’m looking at something relatively simple to set up and use out of the box.

I’ve come across the shapeoko pro which seems to fit many of our needs and budget (5k) but wondering if anyone has had experience with detailed design on these or if there are Australian made equivalents?

Any help or advice is greatly appreciated

[awerby]

It sounds like you may need two machines, one for the jewelry projects in metals and another one for the large wall-art projects in softer materials,

[joeavaerage]

Hi,
any machine that can cut metals, even soft metals like aluminum and brass needs to be very rigid, and if you want to cut steel parts the rigidity requirement goes up ten fold.
This in turn suggests very small machine for otherwise would be just too expensive. I'm not really a fan of Taig mini-mills but for metal jewelry parts its probably one of the few
machines within your budget.

https://taigtools.com/

Craig

[RCaffin]

If you can find a second-hand Adept machine, go for it.
I can zero mine to <5 microns, and it holds that.
It can handle steel as well as plastic, but no way is it 'large'.
Hummm - you may have to upgrade the electronics tho'.

Cheers
Roger