Back in the wood game again

[Downstream]

After going through a few years of sawmill withdrawal since selling my mill I am finally back into processing wood hopefully without some of the material handling issues(killing my back) associated with live edge milling and furniture building.  I will still do some periodically but not the volume or size.  Since my wife and I found our new home a few months ago and re-settled down from our vagabond years (IL to MO to IL to TN to IL)  I have been searching for a CNC router to continue my journey.  Finally gave up on finding a nice used one so pulled the trigger on a new Axiom AR8 which arrived on Monday just in time to become a great 60th birthday present.  I wanted to get one back when I had the sawmill/woodworking going but never wanted to put out the extra cash at the time.  After few days to reconfigure dust collection, run a couple of new circuits, and general shop layout changes I ran my first programs today to level the spoil board.  Good news is that I did not hit anything unintended.  Seems like hitting your clamps on a cnc is the same as sawing through your clamps while milling.  I dodged the first one so hopefully I will on this machine also.  I have a list of items to design and begin making that will hopefully find their way onto marketplace.  tonight I am designing desk nameplates for each of my daughters for possible Christmas presents if I successful.



 

[firefighter ontheside]

Good deal.  I would love a CNC someday if I ever have room.  What part of IL are you in?  I'm just south of St Louis.

[metalspinner]

Nice. I've been eyeballing CNC routers, too. 
Do you have much experience programming, CAD, etc?
I have no experience with that and that's what's keeping me from pulling the trigger. 

[Polish Hammer1]

I want one of these machines also don't have a good excuse to get one because I dont do enough woods working to justify it.. side note the company I work for just bought axiom about a month ago. They seem to be an excellent product

[Downstream]

I am located in Mattoon IL for now.  Hopefully for the long term, but we will continue to follow whatever hand of card God deals us which has been quite interesting over the past 5 years.  We always end up with what we need and even now a new cnc for hopefully a nice retirement side business.  I have been down in SE MO a number of times to float/trout fish the current river.  I also spent 5 months living/working in Lebanon MO at Lowe boats as a part of our vagabond days.

As far as CAD/CAM experience I am fairly new to functional skills.  I am an engineer by education but started out my career using ink pens and drafting boards(obviously a few grey hairs showing).  I progressed into management and found myself now managing engineers using this new technology called CAD/CAM.  So I have managed it for 30 years, but never had to functional learn it.  I have also spent my career in manufacturing businesses in both engineering/quality roles so I have done a lot of work with in/around cnc machining centers so I understand the concepts of G-code programming but had never done it.  I also have a pretty high level of ability to learn computer software since way back I had a computer science minor to go with my engineering degree.  The most used software to design and run this type of system is made by a company called Vectric.  They have different levels of software from 2D to 2.5D to full 3D design and then they have the G-code generators built into the software to create the toolpaths to run the cnc.  Most people start with Vcarve Pro which is 2.5D and never need anything else.  You can down load a free trial version of the software so that you can begin to learn it prior to making the purchase of the software or machine.  Vectric has a crazy amount of online tutorials for every aspect of learning their software and the processes to run a cnc. If you already know a CAD system you probably can design in it and then export your files into another program to generate gcodes. 

I have been researching this for years as we waited to settle down into a permanent location with a workshop.  it is nice to finally be able to physically begin to use the design skills I learned running the trial version of vcarve.  Now the real learning begins. 

I did not know that Axiom had been bought by private equity, but not surprising since there are less and less full private/family owned businesses around.  That move probably led to the recent price increase Axiom implemented which was probably overdue.  I was in the private equity world for a number of years so know the pro/cons pretty well.  Looking at the company that bought Axiom I think it makes me feel even more confident about their future.
It seems like a great fit for future product development advances and support of the existing installed base.  Axiom had positioned themselves as the top dog on the 2nd tier of this type of cnc machine.  the features they offer at their price point is pretty incredible.  With the right capital support and strategic direction they can become one of the full time leaders in the market.  Hopefully that is the direction they are going vs the dinosaur obsolete direction.