I've been wanting to have a play about with a cnc for some time now and I've been looking around for options and availability. I started out looking at Sainsmart and Fox Alien since they were at the cheaper end of the market and seemed to be quite popular. They both have a large array of machines available at various price points, some of their machines are size upgradeable and you can start out with a trim router and work up to a water cooled spindle. Most of these machines come with a little DC motor pretending to be a spindle, only really useful for very light work but it does mean you can have an out of the box experience.
I'd homed in on two Sainsmart machines the PROVerXL 4030 V2 and the PROVerXL 6050 Plus as they seemed to cover most of what I was looking for, although their bed size was always an issue for me. I was a little conflicted over the two. The 4030 has closed loop stepper motors and an expandable bed, the 6050 has linear rails but is not expandable (though this has been a "Coming Soon" feature for a long long time). I put various configurations on each in my shopping cart a number of times whilst I looked around. the 6050 came out at around £1,628 which was the base machine and a 2.2KW water cooled spindle. The 4030 came out at £1,395 with the same spindle but there would be an additional £155.00 (hybrid bed) and £294 (xy upgrade) making the total £1,844. I looked at both of these as a solution for a very, very long time. I think these two machines were at the top of my list as I started looking and would likely be at the top in the end.
I looked around for some other machines, the Longmill and Oozenest workkbee looked interesting, both are build it yourself from parts supplied and that's not something I want to do, this isn't a hobby, it's a tool I can use for my hobby. That's one of the advantages of the Sainsmart machines, 30 minutes from box to working. The prices for the Longmill and Workbee were not far off the Sainsmart ones, but I had a number off issues with each. The Longmill is made by a US company for the US market and having to convert the power from the UK 220-240v for their controller just really shouldn't be a thing is this day and age. The Workbee is still using belts, which even Sainsmart have moved away from on all but their most basic machine. I know they're upgradeable, that's another £200 on top. Both of these machines fell off my list simple because they are 'build it yourself'.
I began thinking that one of those Sainsmart machines were definately in my future.
Then I started looking at Onefinity and Shapeoko. Oh boy, those prices are at a different level, double that of the Sainsmart machines, double the price of the Longmill and Workbee.
So I started looking at the details of both of these machines. How they were built, what features they have and why, why were they that price?
And this is where the deep dive began, learning all the ins and outs of rigidity and repeatability.
One of the hardest parts about buying anything these days is filtering out the 'Paid' and 'Gifted' reviews. It doesn't matter how many times people say that their reviews are honest, if they've been gifted or paid to review it they aren't going to be free of bias. I've been actively hunting down people who make videos and who have paid with their own money. These, in my opinion, are the best types of review.
Purchased from: Where / process / timescale /delays / more delay / support or lack of ...