Widget or K2

[marktm200xcw]

Looking at the WidgetMaster (Midi or Wide) and the K2 2514 frames. Also checking out a few of the turnkey systems such as Romaxx and ShopBot although they would be much more $$$.

Primary application is wood routing of smaller items such as light switch and outlet covers.

Any inputs? Some of my primary considerations are:

• Dremel or Router?
• Unsupported axis on the 2514?

Thanks!

[jalessi]

Mark,

The Dremel tool is underpowered for production work and wont hold a large diameter tool "cutter" .

If you are going into this with the hope of making money, speed will be a issue.

Using a small diameter cutter for all cutting operations may take huge amounts of time.

Having the ability to rough cut with a larger cutter and then a tool change to a small cutter may produce giant benefits.

Custom light switch covers are not very critical parts, either machine will cut them with very good accuracy.

Another issue may be the limitation of small material handling size, larger sheet sizes require less frequent removal and replacement between cutting operations.

Feeding the machine material wastes time.

Welcome to the Zone,

Jeff...

[marktm200xcw]

Thanks, Jeff. I share the same opinion about the Dremels for serious hobby or light production.

Good call on the tooling. I first starting making these covers a few years back on my ProLight milling machine, where I could only do 1 at a time. Plus, since I am doing some contouring, the process was agonizing slow.

Keeping with a router, and pushing the feedrate, I have some concerns about the K2 2514 and its unsupported X-axis, although I did see a thread on here that it could be upgraded to supported rails.

I think I can get by with a smaller machine for now, where I can nest maybe 8-12 of the covers ... although their is always the questions of scalability in the future for more ambitious projects.

So my options so far are to build my own K2 for ~$2k, buy a Romaxx for ~$4k or get a Shopbot for ~$7k.