need some help please

[sintratech]

I have a small home business cutting donun shapes and circles nothing fancy, they range from 1.5" to 11.41" in diameter with a single inner circle of various diameters and some just plain circles. I am wanting to build a machine to cut these. The material is Sintra which is super easy to cut the material is in 1/4 and 1/2 " thickness. can anyoneltell me where to start about building a simple cnc to cut this material?

[murphy625]

It might be easier to just buy a small used cnc already built. I am guessing you cut this stuff with a rotary tool? Like a rotozip or whatever.

How big of a project it is will be directly proportional to your experience with electronics and machines. You dont need a degree in it or anything, but you do need some basic electrical knowledge.

Can you be more specific?

Murphy

[ger21]

Try the free plans - read the thread in this forum.

[sintratech]

I know I am new and all but why does it get so expensive to go with a larger bed or cutting area? I would like to be able to just have it cut a 4x8 sheet but I dont want to spend thousands just to accomplish it.

[Bloy2004]

Everything gets more expensive because of more materials needed for size, bigger precision parts ( harder to make in large size). stronger drive systems, etc.
You may try a small machine and have that 4x8 sheet precut to smaller manageable pieces to feed into the small machine for individual sized donuns.

Bloy

[sintratech]

well I have operated a gerber cutter cnc mainly for cutting multi layers of fiberglass, I am really familiar with auto cad 2004. I am a bit of a computer guy I know some electronics pretty well too. I would try a smaller one and cut my material down. I wouldnt mind buying a small one but I would have to have one on payments, I could do one on monthly credit card payments but dont want it to be real expensive as im just cutting "Donut" shaped parts and circles they are just two dimensional there are no angles.

[Bloy2004]

If you already have a small business going, you may be able to expand your services to more than those flat 2D shapes. If you don't plan to expand beyond, the investment may not be worth it.
Do you use pin routers or other types of simpler machines to "cut out" those shapes?

Otherwise, Just make plans for a CNC in the future ..."for the fun of it"!

Bloy

[sintratech]

The only means I have of any type of work is a hand held jig saw and a craftsman belt/disk sander so now you know why I need a cnc machine. I tried an adjustable fly cutter and its just not accurate enough.