I am 4 man shop thinking about a cnc like the price on a shopbot wondering if there a good machine.We mainly build ff cabinets so i would mainly use it to cut sheet goods for the cabinet boxs driil adj shelf dado notch for toe kicks.I have a panel saw table saw line borer and a panel router now would the cnc be faster. I also use KCD software.
From contributor ni
IF i was looking at a shop bot, i would look at the pro kits from www.cncrouterparts.com
If you are willing to put it together, it can save a ton of money, and i think its better than a low end shop bot. Same style v bearing, very ridgid, ball screw on z axis. You could build it will all the options under 10k
From contributor da
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From contributor ca
It will change your life. Look @ Camaster, ShopBoss and others, too.
We have 8 men, the programmer in our office is kicking their backsides. We are making a ton of cash. You will never look back.
We run a lot of commercial, corian and p-lam regularly. When we do residential on the cnc, it's real nice to stand up boxes and the face frames just land there.
From contributor Ev
I bought a machine that is a step up from ShopBot, and a year later I'm looking to upgrade. It opened a lot of doors for us but we are already limited by what it can do.
I know $70-100,000 sounds like a lot to you, but a lease payment on the right machine is still a fraction of what a single employee costs. This assumes that you can keep it busy, how many sheets of plywood do you cut in a day?
You already know KCD, so the learning curve should be relatively painless. With the right machine, you will be able to put your line bore and panel router out to pasture. We even sold our vertical panel saw and haven't missed it. Your case parts will come off the machine all ready to snap together, and you won't need a genius to assemble them.
From contributor Co
I have a 4 x 8 shopbot that I use for cutting out cabinet boxes. It has 2 spindles not a tool changer and it takes about 6 hours to cut an average kitchen out. About 10k invested because it was used
