Ratbert
Plastic
- Joined
- May 26, 2010
- Location
- Concord, NC
I'm mulling over my options for a milling machine to see personal hobby and gunsmith use and came across Precision Matthew's 7550 style machine:
Page Title
This appears to be well sized for my needs and space, with included power-feed and fluid for $3k delivered. However I can't seem to find anyone with any first-hand experience with these machines, or any other 7550 style imports, and I just wonder if there is some aspects of the machine that would make this deal just a little too good to be true. It seems like I'd only need to add a DRO to it and so for ~4k I'd be ready to start spending money on tooling.
Alternatively, I'm wondering if a smaller benchtop CNC like a Tormach 770 or Syil X4+ might be money better spent. The table size/travel on either of these should still be plenty for my purposes and there is certainly the appeal of being able to have the CNC run curves and pockets and engravings. However by the time I get a machine delivered, with a good stand, computer, & CAD/CAM software I'd be shelling out $10k for a smaller/lighter machine which (I assume) would make it more prone to vibration. Also they seem to primarily be stepper motor based systems with only inductive positioning, rather than a closed-loop system that a manual screw w/ DRO would offer me, and I worry about the reliability of that. If I got one of these machines, I would probably still end up using it "manually" with a MPG about 85%+ of the time.
So what say you? Is the 7550 a good deal with a decided advantage due to weight/simplicity, or are these little R&D type benchtop CNC jobbers going to give me a significant boost in quality. My biggest concern is I don't want to end up dropping multiple thousands on a machine that is just going to frustrate me every time I use it.
Page Title
This appears to be well sized for my needs and space, with included power-feed and fluid for $3k delivered. However I can't seem to find anyone with any first-hand experience with these machines, or any other 7550 style imports, and I just wonder if there is some aspects of the machine that would make this deal just a little too good to be true. It seems like I'd only need to add a DRO to it and so for ~4k I'd be ready to start spending money on tooling.
Alternatively, I'm wondering if a smaller benchtop CNC like a Tormach 770 or Syil X4+ might be money better spent. The table size/travel on either of these should still be plenty for my purposes and there is certainly the appeal of being able to have the CNC run curves and pockets and engravings. However by the time I get a machine delivered, with a good stand, computer, & CAD/CAM software I'd be shelling out $10k for a smaller/lighter machine which (I assume) would make it more prone to vibration. Also they seem to primarily be stepper motor based systems with only inductive positioning, rather than a closed-loop system that a manual screw w/ DRO would offer me, and I worry about the reliability of that. If I got one of these machines, I would probably still end up using it "manually" with a MPG about 85%+ of the time.
So what say you? Is the 7550 a good deal with a decided advantage due to weight/simplicity, or are these little R&D type benchtop CNC jobbers going to give me a significant boost in quality. My biggest concern is I don't want to end up dropping multiple thousands on a machine that is just going to frustrate me every time I use it.
