pstockley has mentioned the Griz G0463 and pointed out some of its short comings. I'm not sure what size your dealer markers will be but you should make sure that the cross travel is enough. This is a light duty mill and is a bit under powered, especially considering the need to run high spindle RPM's. It may be feasable to pick up an air turbine spindle to chuck in the R8 holder for the smaller tools you are likely to use. The other option is to upgrade the spindle drive to hit higher rpms. The best option here is really an unknown until you get some experience with the engraving you will be doing.
Griz also has the G0519 which gives you more room to work with and about twice the mass. Cross travel is also improved so that is good. The bad is the much slower spindle which is bad all around for the materials you expect to machine. Further it might be a bit more difficult to up the speeds significantly. One good/bad thing is that the unit is three phase, so you do have some up side (limited) potential if you get a variable speed inverter. You will likely need an alternative spindle if you end up using extremely small tooling.
Look at Industrial Hobbies also. He has a nice (for the price) import that can be CNC'ed and if I remember correctly can be had with a CNC conversion. This will bring you closer to your limit as far as cost go but it is a larger mill with square columns good for CNC'ing. It also has more travel and about three times the mass. This is a much more serious machine and requires more consideration on where you put it. It does however give you many more options down the road. Industrial Hobbies does sell a nice CNC up grade kit for this machine which does cost a bit but it does appear to be high quality all around. Industrial Hobibies is often at Cabin Fever so if you go might be worth checking out. This is probablly more machine than yuo might first think you need so thought has to go into it.
If you do consider Industrial Hobbies then it would make sense to also look at some of Griz's knee mills in that price range. Good conversion kits will be expensive but a Bridgeport clone is a very flexible machine to have around.
No matter which way you go don't scrimp on the CNC end. For the type of work you are doing you need to be able to get very good repeatability and good resolution. For the X3 (Griz G0463) you could concieveably spend a bit more than the cost of the machine itself for a CNC conversion. Many though take the approach of buying through E-Bay and scrap deallers as this can have a significant impact on conversion expenses.
thanks
Dave  |