Quote:
Originally Posted by sanddrag
No $800 CNC can make parts very accurately or quickly.
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by RoboMaster
And it wouldn't be able to cut metal.
|
I disagree with both of these statements, based on personal experience.
Now, it won't cut parts Fast, Cheap AND Accurately, but it will do any two of these quite well. Often the sacrifice is Fast.
Robomaster, a wood router with carbide bits will easily and happily go through Aluminum, as much as you want. Again, not fast.
I built a
similar machine several years ago for about $400, intended to be sued to drill out Printed Circuit boards. But, it is a full 3-axis CNC machine, with an envelope of about 11 x 11 x 4 inches. I used a Dremel tool instead of a router, and the entire machine was about 1/3 as "robust". But I can form aluminum parts with it - albeit very, very slowly. For example, a 4" AndyMark aluminum wheel might take 8 hours
to produce. The limiting factor is what the Dremel can bite off in one pass - about 10 thousandths. So an inch of depth takes 100 passes - and the table moves at 0.1" per second when cutting like that. (It moves a lot faster in PC Drill mode...). My machine has 0.00025" precision and 0.003" accuracy over 10 inches.
We used a wood router to cut out pockets in our pit cart frame in 2005. It was made of 3/16" 6061 aluminum. We used a plywood template, a pre-drilled hole to start, and we cut out a 8"-ish triangle from the sheet in about a minute. Plain wood router with a carbide bit, about 25 of those triangular holes were cut. (Gloves, full-face shield, hearing protection and other protective gear were mandatory)
So, taking both those personal experiences together, I can easily see that machine in the OP cutting aluminum with 0.001" accuracy, assuming someone builds and adjusts it very carefully.