Intricate Cutting Machine

Perfect Tinning Company. Manufacture XY tables to cut glass, plasitic and metal sheets.

Look up overhead routers, gantry routers, gantry laser cutting machines, gantry plasma arc cutting machines/duplicators, etc.

I saw a laser cutting very intricate patterns in wood over twenty years ago at a woodworking show in Atlanta, GA.

I ran across this site when reading about the X-Wing fighter: RMS Laser

These people are nice folks, and their products are very reasonably priced.

Agree with the shopbot comment, good support forum. Look at V Carve Pro by Vectric for software. Incredible value for money, as is Mach3 control system.

Jim

Give TorchMate.com a try. Their platform is quite flexible. It has supported laser, plasma, oxy-fuel, hydro-cutting, routing and even media blasting. I built a 4' x 8' TM1 unit with a 60 amp plasma cutter and love it.

I own 4 Shopbots that are used daily for producing plastic and wood parts. We love the machines and the Shopbot company is great. These machines are available on the used market for 5,000 to 7,000 and they are VERY flexible. I would have little hesitation to buy any unit up to 6 years old (a drive and table technology change occurred then making older units less desireable) as the maintenace is minimal and the systems are fully supported by low cost up grades to current version technology.

The best part of Shopbot is the software is capable of almost anything and there are inputs and outputs from the controller to turn on or off other items such as torches and routers.

That all being said I would never try to do both Plasma and wood on the same machine or even in the same proximity. You can not conceive the amount of dust a CNC produces. Even with effective dust collection it is a problem. Plasma can set fire to dust and this is how small problems grow quickly out of control. Plasma cutting produces metal waste that is dirty and would tend to contaminate any wood or other material.

I use Artcam and find it to be perfect for almost any need I have ever had.

Wayne