Plastic only? Will you ever be machining metal? If it's just plastic and your parts never get much bigger than 6" x 3", you can probably get by with a $2K Taig.
For $7K, you could get a wickedly fast, super accurate custom router built. Much faster and accurate than a Tormach. Less rigid, but it wouldn't matter for plastic. Very easy to make as long as you use pre-assembled ballscrew actuators (kind of expensive but well within your budget). Only a minimal amount of parts would need to be fabricated from scratch. Mostly bolt together.
When I say "wickedly fast", I mean 15-30 times as fast as the Tormach. The Tormach rapids at 65IPM. A well designed router can do 2000 easily. For a complicated 3D part, that can mean start-to-finish during your lunch break rather than over night. |