who has a CNC?

I'm looking at getting a CNC router.

Initial cost of purchasing the machine and several broken tools until you learn the work process. 

The one I'm looking at has a 2.2kw water cooled spindle controlled off a VFD, uses ball screw and runs on Linear rails. 

Edited by dlyxover - 31 May 2020 at 5:32pm

concept-10 wrote: Nema 34 1200s are very good motors, a vac bed is good but can be a big current draw, 2.2kw water cooled spindle will be fine for anything you do.

FOO wrote: You would be even better off with a vacuum head and brush around the spindle. But a vac bed is good enough.

dlyxover wrote: The one I'm looking at has a 2.2kw water cooled spindle controlled off a VFD, uses ball screw and runs on Linear rails.  Be nice to get a vacuum table and pneumatic pop up pins for material placement. Been given a option on stepper motors a nema 34 850oz or nema 34 1200oz closed loop stepper. Is upgrading worth it?  Been learning fusion 360 and aspire recently.

Sounds like a reasonable tool spec, can you post a link to it?

Re. the motors, I probably wouldn't bother with the upgrade if you are only cutting wood. But to be sure you need to run the maths regarding the maximum forces exerted during cutting. Going larger on motors not always a good idea, means more inductance per winding which limits your maximum speeds. At the point at which your motors can handle whatever is on the bed, going larger is diminishing returns in price and performance.

The debate as to closed loop or not is a constant one, consensus is that there is no harm in going closed loop if you don't mind the extra wiring complexity. But bear in mind how you will wire the motor alarms if they detect that position cannot be maintained.

I would suspect that if you only want to cut wood, then an open loop set of motors would be absolutely fine providing that the tool was well set up and you program tool paths within its capabilities.

Before you buy I would spend a lot of time reading http://www.mycncuk.com/ and https://www.cnczone.com/forums/ for advice and guidance.

Your software choices are good, you can get a lot of work done with aspire and fusion. I find that they complement each other well. Fusion gives you the complex 2.5/3D HSM options while aspire gives you often a quicker route to simpler 2D/2.5D designs.