Comment on What are some dumb mistakes you have made with 3D printing?
Thorry@feddit.org 1 hour agoI bought both my laser cutter and cnc machine from alibaba. The people on there are genuinely very friendly, know their stuff and can help you select the right machine, any addons you need and logistics. They could only ship it to a port near me on a shared container. From there I needed to handle logistics. Now a normal person can’t just pick stuff up from a port (plus the size and weight would require something larger than I can drive), so I found a local logistics company to pick it up, handle the paperwork and deliver it to me.
Shipping took a while (slow boat, shared container) and setting the machine up was a bit of work. It was packaged very well, but getting it all cleaned up and assembled was a lot of work, then aligning and actually learning to work with it was hard as well. One of the drivers was faulty and they shipped a new one from China by plane which arrived in a few days, free of charge. They were very helpful throughout the process and after buying the laser cutter, I bought the cnc through them as well.
The people I dealt with were more like middle man, not the actual people making the machine. But they were very knowledgeable, being able to tell me details and give advice. This was about 15 years ago now, so they weren’t just using AI. Both machines were around $15,000 and comparable in specs and functionality to a $30,000 machine bought locally. I still use the laser all the time, recently upgraded the brain so I could move away from the ancient Windows XP software I ran in a VM on a Linux laptop I have beside it. Unfortunately I had to sell the cnc because of the divorce from my first wife, but am thinking about getting another one.
If you have some money to spend and are looking for a deal, alibaba is the place.
klankin@piefed.ca 46 minutes ago
Do you know if thats just for medium to large machines?
Kinda my dream to get some smaller ones to build a small printer/CNC farm
Thorry@feddit.org 29 minutes ago
The smaller ones are usually hobby/self built. There is nowadays something like Carvera, but those seem like a lot of hassle and expense for not a lot of functionality.
In my opinion there’s no such thing as a small CNC. I have a tiny one 40x30cm working volume, I use it to create PCBs from blank copper coated plates. It’s better than what I used to do with laserprinted resists and chemical etches. But these days ordering PCBs from one of those online fabs is fast and better quality, cheap as well. I can’t get the blank copper coated plates for cheap anymore, since copper is so expensive. But small CNCs often lack the power and speed to be useful and the limited working space is a big downside as well. So when I bought one, I went big, with a lot of power, speed and working surface.
Also don’t snooze on the dust extraction required, all the material a CNC or laser removes gets turned into gas and dust particles. You need well and proper dust extraction and filtering. Especially if you do soft woods and stuff like glued panels like mdf or plywood. The glue gets in the air and rains down everywhere. This causes dust to cake up and be hard to clean. It can ruin the machine and make a mess of your workspace. It’s also very unhealthy to breathe.
People doing 3D printing forget about this as well. Sanding plastics or using materials with carbon or glass inside. The dust that comes off of that isn’t good, so proper dust protection and extraction is a must.