Message Thread:
Shopping advice for high-end 5 axis router
9/2/22
Website: http://artifacturestudios.com
My company makes things for the wedding and events industry. Everything from invitations, to large installation pieces and walls. Almost everything is custom, we might do similar things, but rarely the same thing twice.
So far, our primary tool has been a 4x8 foot Laser cutter. We've done a lot with it, but cutting 3/4" plywood and 1" acrylic is pretty slow. Rather than a more powerful laser, I feel like a 5-axis CNC router would be a good addition. A laser typically cuts all the way through the material, which can be limiting.
Main applications are: cutting of thick woods, solid woods, cutting and edge polishing thick acrylic (via diamond tooling), V-grooving for miter folding, cutting/drilling/notching to enable flat packed versions of our larger pieces that can be shipped and assembled on site. We recently discovered LockDowel, Lamello, and other fastening systems that look like they would enable this. We are also interested in 3D carved pieces, which we expect to be limited in demand due to cost, but faster than cutting slices and hand carving as we've done in the past. We want a 5x10 so we can work with 5x5 sheets of Baltic Birch without cutting it down like we do now.
We attended IWF to explore options. Going in, I expected a BIESSE Rover A was our choice, and expecting to spend about $250k. In talking with BIESSE sales, it felt like everything was an add-on. I get they want flexibility in machine configurations, but charging for nesting makes sense, charging still more to be able to move the nested elements after the fact seems absurd. That said, this may be normal in the industry.
We talked to several companies and showed pictures of what we want to do and kept getting differing opinions between flat table vs. pod and rail. One said we'd definitely need flat table for what we do. Another said we'd want pod and rail because the head can get between the rails for better access carving, and we could still do what we want on flat stock. Stiles/HOMAG had a metal flat table with lots of fixturing options, including T-track, movable gasket, vacuum modules, etc. The guy said it's a hybrid system that isn't great at either mode, but that sounded like what we need.
So I've looked at:
BIESSE Rover A
Casadei Busellato Jet Master T/RT
Stiles/HOMAG P-210/110
SCM accord
I just saw this online:
HOLZ-HER Nextec
Stiles/HOMAG has a location locally which is a major plus. Pricing sounds like it will be similar. I plan to go to a company's demo facility with materials and files to run before I commit to the purchase. But I'm a bit overwhelmed trying to consider the options.
I also learned that the software that comes with machines is not generally made for design. I wanted something where I could design the piece and have the software help me assign the cutting tasks. Some of what I was shown at the show required me to draw in the cutting paths in addition to the piece itself. It seems like the software should know how to generate those to achieve the piece. DDX Software gave some good demos that seemed like they offer those capabilities, albeit at a pretty steep price. But if that's what it takes to get me what I need to take full advantage of the machine, so be it.
9/3/22 #2: Shopping advice for high-end 5 axis ...
I don't see the need for a 5 axis in the list you made. Maybe if you want carvings that are undercut, but not the rest of the items. I ran a MotionMaster 5axis for 12 years. Two 5'x5'x3'Z tables. For the software, you need something that can generate 3D surfaces and then write the code. When running 5 axis, the cutting travel speeds go down dramatically because there are easily 10 times the number of lines of code compared to 3 axis. You are probably looking at $2-300,000 for the machine, software, and training. I'd suggest you get some quotes from some 5 axis shops on some designs you are thinking about so you can consider sending out the work. You mark up their quote and will have a fixed profit with no investment. Then get a good 3 axis for the fraction of the cost and keep all the fast work in house. But if you were at IWF I assume you know what the 5 axis will cost. How far off am I on price?
9/3/22 #4: Shopping advice for high-end 5 axis ...
Website: mcgrewwoodwork.com
Some large work, I do large elements and pieces with 3 axis router cnc, do not rule out Onsrud for 5 axis
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9/3/22 #5: Shopping advice for high-end 5 axis ...
Website: http://www.artifacturestudios.com
Rich, you are correct with your price range. However, in terms of a machine with horizontal drill banks and support for aggregates, I'm told that going from 3 to 5 axis is about $30,000 extra. But some of the aggregates can be $15,000-20,000 each and need to be re-built every so many hours of use. These amounts are not insignificant to be sure, but on the scale of a $250,000 machine, it's not a big jump to add that extra capability. Our B2B clients come up with some pretty crazy ideas, and their clients often have the budgets to support them. So every unique capability we add to our arsenal, the more we can potentially deliver on. We are very creative in getting equipment to do things it wasn't intended to, but it's always a compromise, and often a lot of extra work.
For example, the attached images are things that were possible, whether by laser cutting layers and spending many hours gluing, hand grinding/sanding, or by hiring foam sculptors which are increasingly retiring in our area, and the ones that remain have very long lead-times. Granted, the Z-axis on most of the machines we're looking at is not enough to do any of these without doing them in layers, but it would be far more efficient than the way we've done it previously.
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9/4/22 #6: Shopping advice for high-end 5 axis ...
Couple of thoughts
You can go with flat table and still use pods if needed. Get in touch with Mike at Better Vacuum Cups or BVC. They have pods that can go right on the spoil board.
I believe you are referring to Biesse ad ons for their software. There is lots of software out there that will export and run any machine. I’m a fan of Anderson routers myself. Don’t know if they have 5 axis but have some great machines and we like ours. Feel free to reach out with questions.
9/4/22 #7: Shopping advice for high-end 5 axis ...
Michael,
95% of what I cut on the 5 axis was 10 pound rigid urethane foam. Our most frequent projects with full size cabs for our Caterpillar equipment designers. Cutting dashboards and consoles where are big task. The operators were called in to evaluate the new designs. The best find I made was a tooling discount warehouse that had a closeout on 9" long, 1" diameter, with 6" cutter length milling bits. Extremely hard to find cutters that reach through 6" foam sheets. Dust collection will really be an issue too. 6" of foam dust is really tough to get into a chute. Something like that hummingbird is going to take a very talented surfacing designer and powerful software. Count me into the retired foam sculptor group. Retired in 2014. I mentioned I ran a MotionMaster machine, they became DMS and you might give them a look. A real quality machine. Good luck!
https://dmscncrouters.com/product-lines/dms-essentials-5-axis/
9/4/22 #8: Shopping advice for high-end 5 axis ...
Website: http://www.artifacturestudios.com
The hummingbird is actually very simple. The exterior is all fresh flowers that the Florist did. Our job was to build a core from foam that they could stick stuff into for applying the flowers. We did it by slicing a model and cutting the slices from 1/2" foamcore and gluing them together. The wings were a bit more complicated... they needed to have two layers with a gap between to hold the floral foam. So we did a layer of lightweight plywood and a matching layer of 1/2" foamcore with spacers between. It worked, but I don't think the florist liked the foamcore due to the paper layers and all the glue.
9/6/22 #9: Shopping advice for high-end 5 axis ...
My gosh, I need to move to wherever your client base is. Who in the world financed the fabrication of a giant kitchenaide mixer as a single use item for a wedding. Wow. We recently built a 6000 sq' modular dance/event floor for a venue that is setup and taken down for a single day wedding on grass. Man... the kind of work in your photos is like Disney World for a few hour event.
Coming from the 3axis world and having done a good bit of the slicing/carving you mention I still cant help but to wonder if something even like that elephant is still not more cost effective to slice and carve/clean up on a one-of than generating the file and code and the time and fixturing to 5 axis a single item at that scale.
I could see it if you had a demand for 40 of those elephants but for one (and I know the talent for grinder carving/sculpting is probably a bear) Im not sure.
You know your market.
9/6/22 #10: Shopping advice for high-end 5 axis ...
Website: http://www.artifacturestudios.com
To be fair, those aren't everyday projects. The mixer was actually for an event for The Knot, the big wedding website. They had partnered with Kitchenaid as it's the most frequently added item to a couple's wedding registry and The Knot was launching a new registry service. We did actually crate it up and ship it to them after, so it likely got reused.
The bird however, that was part of a week-long mad dash by over 100 employees to prepare the site and install a literal plane-load of floral for a single wedding. We don't judge though... it pays for our toys-I mean tools. The elephant was a personal project... and is at least 40 hours of grinding/sanding after having done it a few times, so cost-prohibitive to sell in that form. I think there is a market if we could get the cost down. It doesn't have to be cheap, but not $10,000 either. That would become a high-end product line, so it would be worth developing.
9/6/22 #11: Shopping advice for high-end 5 axis ...
No judgement on my end. I just price whats requested. It still doesnt mean you're not left without a bit of question.
As I mentioned, the hard part (in my lowly opinion) is that true 5 axis machining and fixturing is extremely costly even as it pertains to production parts. Its slow, and most people go the alternate route.
I have mentioned it here before, but for the work in your reference images I would honestly be looking more towards a very large Kuka style robot with a decent HP spindle and the funds to hire someone to draw and run it. It would eliminate all the nesting/pod/rail stuff. They can be had used for very attractive pricing and could likely machine 90% of things like the elephant/hummingbird/mixer from a single material position.
9/6/22 #12: Shopping advice for high-end 5 axis ...
Like this:
https://youtube.com/shorts/pNhCr-YT7gc?feature=share
https://youtube.com/shorts/pNhCr-YT7gc?feature=share
9/6/22 #13: Shopping advice for high-end 5 axis ...
Website: http://www.artifacturestudios.com
That's pretty interesting! Is that programmable via CAM software with post-processor, or is it more involved?
I'm certainly not set on this giant 5-axis with drill bank sort of thing, but I seems like it would be the most capable. That said, it does seem to have a fairly low Z-axis, and some of the videos I've seen seem pretty slow, but it's hard to tell whether things are optimized or not. I did realize at the IWF woodworking show that there were low end 3-axis machines priced at a level where I could buy 10 of them for the price I'm looking at here, and parallel production is where speed comes from. That said, I had a similar realization back when I had our first laser with an 18x24" work area, but the 48x96" laser with 3X the power has been far more capable than 6-8 of those lasers would have been. The thought at the time was surrounding paper cutting for the print industry, and we have since gotten galvo lasers where the beam is steered by mirrors instead of a gantry, which makes it super fast.
Specialty equipment definitely has its place. In fact, one thing we produce are higher end wood boxes for gift baskets and things. The slide top version is just nailed together, but we had a version that is V-grooved and miter folded. On the table saw it's a nightmare because the depth of cut is dependent on the material thickness and the material isn't consistent. The solution is for the cutter to be over the material, and I found an Italian company that offered an enormous machine with a vacuum bed to hold the material and 17 cutting heads, half of which applied in the X direction, the other half in the Y direction. It was actually an antique model they would refurbish, but each cutting head required its own dust collection which added up to a ton of CFM, and in our current space it was impractical all around. Then I found a company our of Canada that makes V-grooving machines that look like simplified CNC panel saws. It clamps the material down, and cuts across, then moves the material, clamps, and repeats. They could mount two heads so we could have a V-cut and a dado-cut. We would have bought that except the 3/8" Baltic Birch we would have used became unavailable and has remained unavailable to this day. Some day, it's still a direction we hope to go, but need the supply chain to catch up, and I saw the router as a stop-gap option to V-grooving. Though I watched a video where it did it with a saw in what appeared to be the most inefficient way possible. So I'm hoping there are better options. And maybe ultimately, a panel saw is a better option. There were some at IWF they showed making kerf-bending style cuts. It doesn't seem a stretch to mount a V-blade of the machine would support it. I do want to be able to V-groove acrylic as well. Boxes glued that way look so much nicer. We had constructed a machine to do it using a spindle mounted to a welded frame at 45 degrees with a 1/2" milling bit in it. It worked up to 1/4" thick material I think. But we were hand feeding the material and if we didn't hold it just right, the machine would grab the leading edge of the acrylic and tear it up. So we stopped using it, partly for safety, partly because it required cutting so many extra parts to get yield, it wasn't worth it, particularly when those were custom printed parts.
Basically, we want the most flexibility and capability we can get at this price point, while hoping to avoid any serious limitations that salespeople neglected to mention. From there, we will learn all it can do and push the limits like we always do. But it's valid to say that the process is complicated and time consuming because a lot of our projects are short timeline, and this is meant to help, not hinder those. In a simpler sense, the idea that 5-axis could do beveled edges, or diagonal drilling without extra steps, seems like a win. I'm not expecting 3D carving to be a simple process, but it should be a rewarding one.
9/6/22 #14: Shopping advice for high-end 5 axis ...
My guess based on the breadth of your needs your not going to find one single best solution. The boxes likely a 3 axis with conventional folding via insert tooling, the 3D stuff I would still think a used Kuka style machine (especially if you could land the core machine for 10-20K) would be wise if you a have a demand for a realistic quantity of your three reference image type work.
Just my $0.02 based on a forum thread but I'd be cautious of 5 axis nested/pod rail unless your talking major production of a given group of items. Maybe you are and thats fine. Mind you you will need a draftsperson and operator along with that machine as with any other. The Kuka is not going to be suitable for miterfold box production even though Im sure it could be done.
9/6/22 #15: Shopping advice for high-end 5 axis ...
I think Mark B is on the right track. To add to the argument for two machines; calculate the potential production time that would be run with sheet goods on a three axis. Then throw a 10-20 hour carve into the mix. Once you shift to a nested based production on a cnc it is hard to be without access to one in a workflow sense.
A worn-out Kuka from a production line or high precision environment is worthless to that sector but is a perfectly suitable machine for sculpting and can be had for very reasonable prices. Every video or photo I have seen of a robotic arm carving foam or wood is in a cage or walled off room to contain the dust and keep employees in one piece.
9/6/22 #16: Shopping advice for high-end 5 axis ...
Tom, a 5 axis robot arm is far different than a 5 axis router.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNV9Zpjt7qs
9/6/22 #17: Shopping advice for high-end 5 axis ...
Website: http://www.artifacturestudios.com
Yeah, but the arm and a rotating table seems plausible at the scale we need. Something like this: https://usedrobotstrade.com/milling-machining-robotic-cell
9/7/22 #18: Shopping advice for high-end 5 axis ...
For the type work in your reference images that sure seems like the best solution especially allowing you much more access to underside features from a single fixturing setup. Im sure youve been googling
https://youtu.be/45Tt2KlxxBQ
https://youtu.be/45Tt2KlxxBQ
9/7/22 #19: Shopping advice for high-end 5 axis ...
My point is that a 5 axis flat table is not ideal for large sculpting nor is a machine with big z height ideal for sheet goods. Add to that the bottleneck of sculpting many hours on a machine that would otherwise be cutting sheet goods. Get a dedicated sculpting machine and a 3 axis without the compromises and you may still stay on budget depending on software choices.
9/8/22 #20: Shopping advice for high-end 5 axis ...
The main thing that you want to consider when shopping for a 5 axis machine is Z height. Pod and rail will subtract Z height depending on the height of pod that you use. We use 50 mm pods generally with our Holzher promaster. If we require a flat table, we put a sheet of MDF on the pods. We use Alphacam to program, which is quite pricey, but now has an Alphacam 3D designer add on for modeling. Another good design program for 3D is Vectric Aspire, which will pretty much create mostly anything you would need, with the exception of solid models, but would need NC HOPS 7 4 solid to import models .I know HOPS is included with Holzher machines, but not sure of the current configuration.
9/8/22 #21: Shopping advice for high-end 5 axis ...
Website: http://www.artifacturestudios.com
I think you're all on to something with this two machine suggestion! It looks like a robot arm carving system can be had for 80,000Euros and at the moment, that's nearly 1:1 with USD.
9/22/22 #22: Shopping advice for high-end 5 axis ...
Website: https://www.acctekgroup.com/index.html
The 5 axis cnc router is good at processing methods such as space surface processing, special-shaped processing. Italy's Hiteco 10KW spindle and YASKAWA Servo motors & drivers. All famous brand and high quality choice, ensure machine with high performance and long working life.
10/9/22 #23: Shopping advice for high-end 5 axis ...
Michael
Local to me is this Company, Similar stuff, Give them a call !
https://timburllc.com/digital-fabrication-capabilities/
I have seen similar stuff go through his shop.
https://timburllc.com/digital-fabrication-capabilities/
10/9/22 #25: Shopping advice for high-end 5 axis ...
Website: http://www.artifacturestudios.com
Cool place! Thanks for sharing.
1/31/24 #26: Shopping advice for high-end 5 axis ...
The company I work for purchased a Casadei/Muratori Ranger in 2021. Casadei/Muratori machines require the use of DDX easywood Software to generate the programing for their machines.
we have had several major issues with the CNC machine and Casadei/Muratori machines Customer service is impeccable.
Truly above and beyond at every interaction.
DDX software however, the only software manual or literature is 10 years old, it is poorly translated from Italian, and does not cover any features or plugins that have come out in a decade. this is over 500 topics, controls or settings that have no explanation, which was confusing to me until they started increasing their support contract price by 330% and their customer service is as dismal as Casadei's is amazing.
if anyone out there is using the DDX software and has a similar experience please reach out to me, I would like to get a dedicated DDX forum going for us to hopefully help support each other rather than relying on DDX
9/24/24 #27: Shopping advice for high-end 5 axis ...
Website: http://www.rhinocncmachine.com
Welcome to visit : www.rhinocncmachine.com
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