New Toys!

I’ve had some discussions with many parties involved in the sheet router project we’ve had for many years, and we’ve come to a bit of a mutual agreement that it’s time to move it on and just purchase a working one. Unfortunately all of the people involved in it’s construction either don’t have the time or energy to finish it, which is completely understandable as it’s a huge job. I think it has the potential to be a massively important piece of equipment at the Space, and most people I’ve talked to have said they’d be super keen to learn how to use it + do any classes we might have on running it - this, combined along with being able to utilise all of our speakers could lead it to be a potential gold mine for us.

Obviously this will be voted on, but the plan is that we could parts the existing sheet router out and almost cover our entire buy cost for a cheaper Chinese model. Like the laser cutter, we don’t expect this to be perfect, but it will at least be a great base to start from. Current quotes seem to put us around $6500 inc. shipping for a 3 axis, 2500x1300, 3kw water cooled model including vacuum table, but I am open to discussion around suitable routers.

Thoughts/opinions/etc?

Have you seen the one that Tested showed recently on YouTube? Available as a kit and can even have a plasma cutter. Might also be able to integrate into the plans for dust extraction. Various sizes were available and the biggest sizes are biiig!

Unfortunately that ends up being considerably more than double the price of a Chinese router - and we’ve still got to build it haha.

I received a bunch of quotes this afternoon - all in the realms of $7k delivered. One seems to have a lot more aftermarket support (a tech will come to ensure it’s all running) and is a better design, but the other comes with a 5.5hp vacuum pump and manifold system; a fairly considerable cost.

I’ll prepare a bunch of quotes so we can get a good comparison together.

Great video… It would be great to have this type of tooling