I have been considering purchasing a couple of machines and came upon this site. First a software question. Will software like Adobe cad or corel print to these or do they have to be run with the software for sale here. I like to keep things as easy as possible. Now ont what I want to do a table capable of taking full 4 foot by 8 foot stock. preferably 3 dimensions automated. My goal is to buy or build several machines. 1 plasma cutter 2.. laser co2. 3 smaller laser led 4 lathe 3 dimensional cnc 5 a fiber laser cutter 6 a 3 dimensional lathe... now I know this is a tall order. But I am hoping someine can someone tell me am I on the right track with this product? The plasma cutter would be my preferred first product. If you wanted to do it right what would your shopping list be? Which products I described above would be reasonable to produce with this kit? sorry for such stupid questions I am pretty good mechanic and a good electronics guy so hopefully not getting in over my head. Thank you all in advance. To come up with as close to a commercial product
The machines here are open source, and great machines, but they are hobby machines. You can use them for limited production scale, but anything at the scale you want (sheet goods) you are going to have to design and build yourself if you want to go the open source route. It is not really that difficult to do, it can be costly though, and ultimately, it may end up costing more than a commercial product if you factor in mistakes, downtime. I realize everyone wants a commercial grade product at hobby grade price, and it is possible, but uptime and support are important as well. If this is for a business (sorry OB), you will want to go with something commercial that comes with support. As far as software goes, any CAD/CAM software will work, the actual machines will take whatever the CAD/CAM program spits out. In the case of OB, and many many other CNC products, it is simply gcode, an open standard. Control software and CAD/CAM are separate, you are not limited to any particular product.
Checkout the LEAD1515 OpenBuilds LEAD CNC Machine 1515 (60" x 60") - using a function called "tiling" (see Toolpath Tiling - VCarve Pro V9.0 User Manual) you can feed the stock through even if its longer than the machine. checkout the two in-depth videos on the topic from community member Dr David Florian. His first video deals with an HF plasma (not ideal, creates EMI) but is still worth watching as he deals with the floating head axis, CAM, etc. Second video he is using a LF start plasma (no emi issues): Video 1: Video 2:
