I am a K40 laser owner but I’m looking to buy a 5-axis CNC machine as I need to be able to do more complex work (in the additional axes).
I don’t have a huge budget so I have looked at 5 axis 3040 machines (about £2k). I had also looked at the Proxxon machine (before I bought the K40) but I believe that this can only work on 3 axes unless anyone knows a way to upgrade it to 5 axes?
I only need to cut relatively small items, no more than about 170mm wide by 80mm. I want the extra axis because I want to be able to cut faceted edges automatically (I’m currently adding these by hand after cutting the basic shape with a laser).
-Can anyone recommend what I should look at in terms of hardware?
-Will LaserWeb/CNCWeb be able to drive this 5 axis machine or will I need different software and if I need different software, what would you recommend
-Finally should I upgrade the controller board of whatever I buy (e.g. I upgraded my K40 laser to a Choesion3D) and if so, what should I buy?
Need to clarify 5 axis. CNC XYZ + Rotary + additional spinning axis regarding the rotary?
Machine links and pics would be helpful.
Smoothie can do 5 or 6 axis. Probably with external stepper drivers for any decently powerful enough machine, so you’d just be using the board as a brain.
Software is the real question. Sure, Smoothie can execute gCode sent to it, but you still have to make it. In general, 5 axis or more CAM isn’t widely available in non-“high end”- proprietary circles.
LW should be able to feed 5-axis gcode to Smoothie, but its CAM can’t generate it and its gcode preview won’t draw it correctly. The most-affordable 5-axis CAM I know of is one of the Fusion 360 versions. Ultimate, I believe, which runs $1,500 USD/year.