Best CNC kit?

[TheCamba]

Has anyone had a lot of experience with CNC machines?  Are there any recommendations?  Price over performance and other questions like that.  

 

Just thinking about doing some CNC projects and want to make sure I start off on the right foot.

 

Thanks for all input.

 

EDIT:

Realized as I was on some other forums, that I should include price.  I am thinking $500 give or take.  But I am all up for creativity.

Edited January 30, 2017 by TheCamba

[Hackentosher]

 You need to double your budget for a good one.

[TheCamba]

I'm not planning on many big projects, but I guess I should calculate for change.  Have any recommendations on a 1k and above?

[Doramius]

Like for woodworking?  I've used mu father's, but that's the only thing I know in relation to CNC machines.

[Hackentosher]

There's the inventables kit that is pretty good, upwards from that is the Shopbots, but those are like $7000 for the cheap one. 

[bob345]

depends on what you want to do. Any hobby level kits are not going to reliably cut any kind of metal though they can do just fine with wood and some plastics. If you are looking at kits, be sure to avoid any with belt drive axis. You want ball screw linear motion for any kind of cnc work. If you want to machine metal, the minimum i would go with would be something like a tormach pcnc440.  

[TheCamba]

33 minutes ago, bob345 said:

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1 hour ago, Doramius said:

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I am looking at primarily wood working.  Metal would be way on down the line.  If I did metal, it would only be deep enough to engrave.  I figure that would be a different bit and seeing if the drill could support the resistance.

[Doramius]

I've used a CNC and tools, but again, my knowledge is very limited.  I could ask my father.  He's been doing woodcraft for about 60+ years.  

[bob345]

9 minutes ago, TheCamba said:

 

I am looking at primarily wood working.  Metal would be way on down the line.  If I did metal, it would only be deep enough to engrave.  I figure that would be a different bit and seeing if the drill could support the resistance.

In that case, i might recommend building your own. For a wood cutting cnc router, there is not really all that much too it and there is a ton of information out there for diy cnc routers. open builds has a pretty nice database of designs.

 

http://openbuilds.org/?category=cnc-router-builds&id=286

[TheCamba]

22 minutes ago, bob345 said:

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That is a super helpful website.  I have never seen that one before.  I will be sure to get lost in it.

[TheCamba]

Looks like they have a starter kit for around $600.  Not bad.  Went through the tutorial and it looks super do-able.