i got a new toy & a new project, all in one!

[netsol]

took advantage of the end of years sale, bought a bobscnc 744 with extension cuts a 4'x8' sheet of substrate.
my plan is, print on the roland with registration marks, laminate with the royal sovereign, mount to coro or whatever on one of the daige's (routine so far...)

THEN

send to flexi enroute (there is a button for it)
use the bobscnc to contour cut. (that's why i posted it as a question)

i have no patience for hand cutting (and to be honest, i suck at it!)

so, if nothing else, it should keep the guys from laughing at what a terrible job i do, following a cut line

all in, building table around it, adding dust collection, and the rather questionable jig to maintain consistent height for manual tool changes, will this turn into a great way to wet my feet in this area of business, for only around $5000 or will i be posting the whole thing on craigslist so i don't have to annoy myself looking at it?

my plan B was to buy a "gerber says it can't be fixed" sabre 408 for around $5000

i was getting myself a new project, either way & if i see a deal on a sabre tomorrow, i will probably hedge my bets and buy it

 

[CanuckSigns]

Cool!

Does your router have a camera or some way of reading crop marks to know where to cut? Or are you just going to set the home position and hope for the best?

 

[Attila Nagy]

I Wish I had Space for that kind of projects

 

[GB2]

No offense but I don't think either of those ideas are good options. That 744 plywood CNC looks questionable at best and I would never buy a Gerber408 that "can't be fixed" because it probably....can't be fixed!....and is only good for parts. If you already bought the 744 and you are willing to buy the 408, now you are in the $5000 to $10,000 price range even if you sell something. For that kind of money you can find good used router, like a Gerber Dimension that I sold a short while ago or a nice ShopBot, which is a fine economical brand with a large support following. I don't understand how you expect to contour cut printed material in the router without a camera system either, unless like CanuckSigns said you just home it and hope for the best. There definitely is a big commitment and learning curve to getting into CNC routing so it's OK to start as small and economically as possible but you don't want to start out with poor equipment and practices that will discourage you or lead you down the wrong path.

 

[netsol]

gb2

i love can't be fixed
we have almost 30 pieces of sign equipment, all pronounced can't be fixed by manufacturer. right now the score is 28-2 (2 roland pc600's that i just don't have time to fix, if i spent a day or so we could be batting 100%

also have a can't be fixed bucket truck, scissor lift, spectrum analyzer, so, if anyone has a can't be fixed sabre, CALL ME.

I assume i will simply print a registration mark & use one of my gerber "bomb sights" and line up that way. i expect to waste a day here and there, getting scaling issues out of the way. i don't anticipate many problems after that. TIME WILL TELL

I have a bobscnc e3 we purchased because the previous owner thought itvcouldn't be fixed, we have played with the smaller one. not to over simplify, but the. 744 is just a larger e3, and i have played with plotters and xy code sonce 1984.

i am not trying to do anything tricky initially, contour cutting around a coroplast coffee cup or soup tureen, perhaps more complicated shapes in the future. but if i create a shape in flexi, send to enroute, alight eith bombsight, and contour cut,it should be relatively straight forward (if it fools me, i will be honest, so you can laugh at me.

and inwill find a gerber. i just turned a "working" one down for$8000

 

[netsol]

Cool!

Does your router have a camera or some way of reading crop marks to know where to cut? Or are you just going to set the home position and hope for the best?

adding a scanning head wouldn't be a bad idea.
i have to watch out for "mission creep". i would rather be cutting with the gerber bombsight for registration, then add scanner.

 

[Attila Nagy]

No offense but I don't think either of those ideas are good options. That 744 plywood CNC looks questionable at best and I would never buy a Gerber408 that "can't be fixed" because it probably....can't be fixed!....and is only good for parts. If you already bought the 744 and you are willing to buy the 408, now you are in the $5000 to $10,000 price range even if you sell something. For that kind of money you can find good used router, like a Gerber Dimension that I sold a short while ago or a nice ShopBot, which is a fine economical brand with a large support following. I don't understand how you expect to contour cut printed material in the router without a camera system either, unless like CanuckSigns said you just home it and hope for the best. There definitely is a big commitment and learning curve to getting into CNC routing so it's OK to start as small and economically as possible but you don't want to start out with poor equipment and practices that will discourage you or lead you down the wrong path.

Cant be fixed? By Who? But I agree 5000 is a lots of money. Still everything can be fixed. Unless it has been dropped from the 10th floor Gerber is a solid base. I started with a 401 in the early 90's.

 

[CanuckSigns]

adding a scanning head wouldn't be a bad idea.
i have to watch out for "mission creep". i would rather be cutting with the gerber bombsight for registration, then add scanner.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the bombsite works on the gerber envision plotters because the sprocket feed on the vinyl eliminates any left/right drift, so you only need to worry about 1 dimension, this is not the case when cutting prints applied to a sheet. I would think you would be better building a hard stop at the 0,0 position, and paying extra attention when applying your vinyl to the sheet and trying to avoid and drifting, but even with all that, the best you can hope for is "pretty close" which might be fine, as long as you are ok with that.

 

[GB2]

OK, so obviously you are much more capable than I thought and not a novice at all so I give you credit where credit is due for you ingenuity. I have an Edge, Envision, Multicam 3000, Enroute and Flexi (only use it as a printing rip) but I'm still at a loss as to what you are going to do with a Gerber bombsite and contour cutting on a router. I agree that squaring up your piece to a home position on the router would provide a much simpler and fairly accurate cutting registration. Actually instead of printing registration marks you could print an actual square around your printed image and then square and home it to the router. I never really thought about it before but I think I'll try that myself!

 

[netsol]

gb2

i will be interested to see what your results are

i obviously could simply try it with the e3, but we are actually busy with my other business. i will wait till we assemble the 744

the new toy excitement will get me started when the new cnc comes in on wednesday

 

[rossmosh]

You bought a plywood CNC router when you can build an 8020 one for not much more? I'm confused...

 

[netsol]

I Wish I had Space for that kind of projects

attila
we had about 600 sq feet of retail space, my 2 car garage & 4 storage units

now that i retired, we have a 5000 sq ft warehouse. (it is getting full, we are using all our space)

if i got a sabre, something would have to go back into storage. we are excited. one of our repeat items is the large print & stick coffee cup. with the cnc we can mount to a sheet of mdf instead of coro, then contour cut

there are a few ideas i have for new products. the bobscnc will let me turn out small quantities. if it all works as i plan, we will get a real cnc

 

[alevit53]

What will you be using to cut/rout the coroplast? If you try to use the router, it will shred and melt.
We fought with cutting foam core and coroplast on our CNC for years.
Finally, this year, we added an oscillating tangential cutter. It cuts almost every "soft" material perfectly.
We print the panel on our flatbed with a preset registration mark at 1,47 and 95,1. That way we can set the panel accurately on the table and the cuts are perfect.

 

[zspace]

Sounds like you have the drive to make it all work and have a fun project.

I agree with alevit. Coro is tough to cut well with a router. Maybe if you run at low RPMs it will keep from melting edges, but you will probably have to hand trim the tag ends of the flute walls that bend out of the way instead of cutting clean.

 

[netsol]

You bought a plywood CNC router when you can build an 8020 one for not much more? I'm confused...

rossmosh
sometime in the last year, i bought a smaller version of the bobscnc on craigslist. (i forget exactly when, but i drove to brooklyn. (and we were already wering masks)

i think the larger one will do everything i need. i am happy with how responsive bob is. the machine is $2600, (it was a price based thing) by the time i build a table, get a nice set of bits, buy the 4' extension, add dust collection, network it, so we can work from multiple stations... i am close to $5k.

to answer you question, it should do everything i need. it is very possible, a year from now, there may be a sabre sitting next to it, though

 

[netsol]

Sounds like you have the drive to make it all work and have a fun project.

I agree with alevit. Coro is tough to cut well with a router. Maybe if you run at low RPMs it will keep from melting edges, but you will probably have to hand trim the tag ends of the flute walls that bend out of the way instead of cutting clean.

yes and no. we use 3 flute router bits & at the right speed there is very little to clean up.
(there is more to clean up, because my eye/hand control is not what it once was.

the addition of the cnc means i can go stand by the espresso machine or the frozen margherita machine while the cnc does most of the work.

if it doesn't work out, it won't be the most money i have ever wasted...

but i have high hopes

 

[klikn]

I have a CNC table. I use mach3, but I'm planning to switch to UCCNC.

I've made(modified https://tinyurl.com/y54o9jzp) a simple macro where I input locations of 2 markers (first is 0,0, second 0,y and third x,0), then machine moves to each location where I have to manually position camera to the center of marker. Then macro calculates angle and x and y scale of cut file.

I think it would be possible to automatically scan markers with some modifications to this plugin
https://www.sheetcam.com/Scanything/index
https://www.forum.cncdrive.com/view...7&sid=44a29801cf67c40083e9d6001178deb0#p21797