Alternative to a cnc?

[Pecker]

Hi all, I may have a project coming up that requires 600 or so smiley faces to be cut into 9mm mdf. The thought of getting a small cnc type machine crossed my mind, but was horrified to see the costs! (£5000 is a bit more then the job is worth LOL)

Has anyone any suggestions of an alternative or have any experience of building one? (apparently basic milling machines can be converted, but it has to be practical... )

otherwise it's a new small router and jig...

For various reasons I do not wish to farm the work out.

Woody

 

[JFC]

Now let me think about this one :lol:

 

[Max Power]

Hi Woody,
Jordan Woodworking Machinery were demonstrating a C R Onsrud inverted router at Woodworking Scotland It was being used to cut rocking horse shapes out of 9mm mdf so might fulfil your requirements.
No idea of the cost though

 

[JFC]

Hmmmmmmmmm a machine that can cut circles , index and stop at certain points and template follow . There must be something on the market that can do this for around £600 . Hmmmmm .......

 

[Scrit]

Has anyone any suggestions of an alternative or have any experience of building one? (apparently basic milling machines can be converted, but it has to be practical... )

£5000 for a CNC router is bargain basement, believe me, whilst converting a milling machine is a complete waste of time and effort - they aren't designed to handle routing spindle speeds, it will potentially take you several months to install the kit and get it working then the beastie will be excrutiatingly slow, so the job will become a real PITA. Even a half decent basic mill and drill will be £750 to £1000 but will the project bear the cost? Take a closer look at my avatar - that, or rather this:

is an overhead pin router and it can handle that type of work with ease. True, Jordan's will happily flog you an Onsrud at £3.5k or more (don't look for secondhand, they've only been in the UK a couple of years), but you don't need that sort of dosh. As my Wadkin is a bit on the heavy side (1.35 tonnes) and needs a substantial 3-phase power supply and compressed air, maybe what you need is a smaller version of the same, such as the Elu/Trend router (no longer made, but available secondhand):

(which incidentally belongs to member Joe90) In conjunction with a Tufnol or HPL template jig. Ask the pin router owners and you get a sensible answer

Scrit

Long suffering pin router user with the scars to show for it :roll:

 

[Scrit]

Hmmmmmmmmm a machine that can cut circles , index and stop at certain points and template follow . There must be something on the market that can do this for around £600 . Hmmmmm .......

Yes, it's called a pin router

Scrit

 

[Pecker]

Thank you very much everyone, especially Scrit who phoned me and had a long chat. (Hope the pizza tasted as good as it looked... LOl).

I will go away and ponder for a day or two on various options.

Cheers all, Woody

 

[JFC]

Can you do this on a pin router ?
http://legacywoodworking.com/galleryItem.cfm?project=308

 

[Scrit]

With the correct jigging - yes - but frankly I wouldn't want to do that, because the recessor would do a better job. Pin routers are designed for doing multiples, hundreds or even thousands of a given, mainly 2-1/2D, object. At the end of the day that is what a lot of production woodworking happens to be. But the biggest difference is one of purpose and durability - whilst the pin routers are nowhere near as versatile as the Legacy, the 6HP induction motors on them will last just a little longer than the DW on your Leggy methinks. BTW, can your Legacy self-feed a flat object for profiling like my UX-B1a? :wink:

Scrit

 

[JFC]

Mine cant but if you buy the big one at something like 20k you can program it . Rather spend the dosh on a cnc myself .

 

[Inspector]

Pecker

Maybe the obvious is escaping me but wouldn't it be better to go to a company with a CNC router and have them make the happy faces by the grin load. Finish them off and add your markup without having to deal with the clouds of MDF dust and handling all those sheets too.

If your planning on doing more of the same in the future then I could see getting your own setup of some kind, but if this is a one of, or only occasional job then subcontracting might make more sense.

 

[Scrit]

Mine cant but if you buy the big one at something like 20k you can program it . Rather spend the dosh on a cnc myself .

20k? At that price it is a CNC router, surely?

Scrit

 

[Pecker]

Pecker

Maybe the obvious is escaping me but wouldn't it be better to go to a company with a CNC router and have them make the happy faces by the grin load. Finish them off and add your markup without having to deal with the clouds of MDF dust and handling all those sheets too.

If your planning on doing more of the same in the future then I could see getting your own setup of some kind, but if this is a one of, or only occasional job then subcontracting might make more sense.

Hi Inspector, there is merit but I don't want to go that route.
a) the only local company is ruddy expensive, rude, arogant and not very helpful.. been there before. Living rurally has it's problems.

b) Therfore transportation costs need to be built into it, which adds to the already tight margin

c) There needs to be two silghtly different designs, so set up costs

d) I'm kinda hoping this may lead onto otherwork we could carry out, and the machine could be used on a semi regular basis.

e) I need the work for my employee!

I'm also not quite sure at this stage the final quantity so overall I would prefer to keep it in house, but I do totally understand the sentiments.

Incidently, thanks to Lynx for your offer, but the above reasons says it all.

Regards Woody

 

[LyNx]

Out of interest. How big are these going to be?

 

[Pecker]

Out of interest. How big are these going to be?

very good question, the faces approx 3" at present and the boards roughly 18"x 10"... at the moment!

woody