Trace-A-Punch comments?

[Laff Riot]

http://www.heckind.net/Trace.htm

Getting ready to buy my wife this for xmas ... cough.. cough.. I thought it was a sewing machine hun - really..

Wondering if anyone can provide me with some feedback - we currently cut out 1/8" and 1/4" aluminum sheet with a 4x8 cnc router. We are looking for a faster less skilled option to free up our table.

A. Does the edge need a lot of finish work to remove tooling marks?
B. Is the machine dangerous to operate?
C. Have you seen anything similar that will accept 1/4" aluminum?
D. Any hidden wear costs - eg. specialty cutting heads that cost $300 ea every month?
E. Any thoughts on a DIY version using off-shelf tools? Most of our shapes are 6" x 36 rectangular or with simple curves. We have considered punches and shears with shaped blades but that locks us into 1 shape per press.

Any feedback is appreciated.

[wms]

I owned one of these at one time..a few years back..Loved it..

If I remember corectly..mount it to solid bench or post..

Really quite easy to use and by mounting a template to the top of your material it does a good job of following the template..

The punch and dies where reasonable..and last a good bit if you are doing softer material...we did mostly 4130 plate up to .063 and it still worked good and the tooling lasted longer that I thought it should..plus they sharpened them for a reasonable fee..good as new..

It is fairly noisy as you can inagine..but not overwelming..and if you get the hang of it..you really don't have to remove any burrs..the edge quality really depends on how fast you go..the smaller the step over the better the edge..the sharper the tooling the better the edge..same as anything..

We no longer need the unit, due to changes in products so we sold it to one of our airplane customers and they still use it every day.

[Laff Riot]

Many thanks

I will post some pics & reviews when mine comes in if anyone else has an interest in this type of equipment.