[sdiy] Re: Possibly quick / cheap pcb service - anyone interested?

[Julian]

>My semi-DIY CNC  setup cost about $800 US, including the software. I think Julian's is about the same.


Hehe.. I wish.

You can get some bits and pieces on the cheap from china now, but look at the prices of commercial machines from the likes of 
gravograph etc, and you could easily burn 5, 10, 15k (british pounds).

Those machines are possibly overpriced, however there is a reason why companies continue to spend that sort of money on them, rather 
than $1000 imports from china.

If you look at the cost of decent ball screw units, you can empty your wallet very quickly.  Not that i paid this for it, but the Z 
axis on my machine has a travel of just 300mm.  The list price of the ball screw and slides of that one 300mm axis alone is GBP 650 
+ vat (about USD 1200).  Which seems phenomenal, until you realise what they're generally used for - i bought my unit from an 
industrial breaker who was stripping clean room environments where the units were previously being used to align computer hard drive 
heads.

This is overkill for engraving, certainly, but, at the same time, i do quite often get mails from people asking how to get good 
engraving results, and then admit that they're using lead-screw axis.  Or bits of dismantled printer drivers.  Sure, its possible, 
but, again, there is a reason why companies (including mine, i guess) pay out considerably more on parts than you may imagine.  I do 
believe that in engineering there is some element of if you [sensibly] throw money at tooling you do get better results, quicker.

To give an indication, my machine is a DIY machine.  It took me about 18 months to build.  And cost more than my German hatchback.

In that, the build was neither quick, nor cheap, but, at the end of it, i have a machine to rival the commercial machines, and one 
that will keep me (the human) as the weak link in the chain for some time to come.

Julian