I’ve seen a whole bunch of new entries into the home cnc market over the last few years, especially from crowd sourcing platforms and chines sites like bangood and aliexpress. prices are going down and I’m seeing features coming as standard that used to be expensive extras.
Some look really good and others look like they will break in 5 minutes.
I’m wondering, with all of these new machines in the sub $1000 space, not to mention the sub $500 space , what is considered entry level these days and what features are considered basic features?
how cheap is too cheap as well.
just in broad strokes, for someone who wants to do craft projects rather than a serious engineer or someone running their own cnc farm
and the Shapeoko 4 Standard at $1,800 underscores how it’s been a long time since the SO3 launched at $999 and the Shapeoko was on Kickstarter striving for a ~$300 price point.
That said, the notable consideration is support — we still have parts for the SO3, and any owner of a Carbide 3D machine can contact us about any difficulty and we will do our best to assist.
Since one is generally used for situations where the other isn’t suitable, we’re not really comparing like for like.
I can buy an entire crate of good quality wall rollers for the same price as an entry level Badger air brush. The badge will take a really long time to get my ceiling painted, and the rollers will give a rally bad finish on my warhammer army.
Likewise, a Shapeoko can’t make a hollow 3D object with internal chambers, but it can cut a baseplate out of Acrylic that’s far stronger than anything that can be made using an FDM printer.
My point is, making a machine with a certain size span has a certain engineering/material cost — this cost is even higher for a CNC machine vs. a 3D printer, since the former requires rigidity of a level beyond that of the latter.
hink that the issues is more around what is considered an entry level machine and the prices involved, the cost and barrier for entry for 3d printing has plumetted in recent years, and so an entry level CNC costs as much as a prosumer level 3d printer, so its a little shocking for some to see how expensive cnc are by comparison.
There are less-expensive CNC machines — the original Shapeoko 1 came in at less than 300 and had a working area similar to the Nomad…
But for a CNC, one pretty much needs the larger working area — Inventables started out by selling the Shapeoko 1 and 2, with the latter having 500mm x 500mm rails and a ~12" x 12" working area, adding an option for 1M x 1M rails — by the time they got to the X-Carve they dropped all options save for 1M x 1M because they weren’t selling enough to justify the SKU complexity. These days they only sell the X-Carve Pro which is available w/ either a 4’ x 2’ or 4’ x 4’ working area.
My suggestion has always been get a:
small square unit (Standard or 2’ x 2’) if working on small projects
wider unit (XL or 4’ x 2’) if working with boards
large square unit (XXL or 4’ x 4’) if working with sheet goods
That said, one can expand what one works on via tiling.
my original interest was more what features I should expect, like dust extraction, so I can better determine which cnc are cheap because they are old, obselete, but or have cut too many corners.
my main experience is with 3d printers. 5 years ago runout sensors and automatic bed leveling were considered mid level features, today they come as standard on the entry level ender 3. the same with input shaping, it used to be a prosumer feature, but entry level printers now have it as standard.
Well, the Carbide 3D Shapeoko machines (remember, I’m a corporate shill) include a Sweepy for dust collection, a #201 1/4" endmill, homing switches, and a tool length sensor, (all of which seem to be charged for separately by one or more competitors) and are pretty much good to go out of the box (just bring your own table, vacuum, trim router (if you don’t buy one of our routers or spindles), and computer to run the software/control the machine (you don’t even need an internet connection — in the past we’ve burned a CD-R with the current software and mailed it).
