| I've dealt pretty heavily in this area (Bought and operated several CNCs over the years) Your price point is going to limit your machines to almost exclusively Chinese imports Lasers: Boss laser imports machines from China and provides great American-based support. If you can figure things your self, check out Cloudray laser. They ship straight from China; keep in mind the customs/shipping risks. I've purchased from both before. If you're not running production jobs, 75W C02 should be fine. I prefer 150W RECI C02 laser tubes. The go-to Chinese controller is made by Ruida. At the end of the day; most of these Chinese laser brands all have the same part suppliers, just different levels of QC and quality assembly. I'd avoid Glowforge and similar brands. They are a great for first time users at home; but I'd be more worried about work volume, laser power, and future spare part availability. I know quite a few people that outgrew their Glowforge-like machines and went with bigger more industrial imported lasers. Purchase Lightburn for sending jobs from the PC to the laser. Routers: I have a few friends that have a larger Shapeko-like machine that works well for Etsy-like products. Think embossed cutting boards, wall art etc. Granted there part is size like 12"x 24". The machine isn't stiff (compared to industrial units); but it gets the job done. Whatever machine you purchase you'd want to stick to linear guide rail motion system for all the axis; avoid the roller-wheel style motion systems if possible. If I personally was going to buy a new router in that price range; I'd buy either an Avid Pro machine or import a chinese machine straight from Alibaba. Start with checking out OMNICNC in China. Depending on your location; check out classifed ads, or talk to some local signmakers. They might be selling their older US-made Multicam machines for cheap. I can give much more specific recommendations based on your production rate and part size/features/materials. EDIT: Mirroring what other people are saying. If you just need some parts just to get brewery going, then I'd sub this out to someone else. If you have time, money, desire, love to spend many hours and thousands of dollars to learn the art of manufacturing, then go for it. But I'd recommend to solve the goal at hand first. Your brewery. |
Re Lasers: I've seen Lightburn come up a few times and given that canning and labeling are more core to the business (and the constraints on our space), I will probably go ahead here. Boss and Cloudray look like much better vendors than what I've seen so far. Most of the desktop laser brands I've founds seem like thin website wrappers over an Alibaba/Amazon backend, and I don't mind paying extra for support.
Re CNC: I also think the general advice here is probably right. My needs are pretty simple so the price and seemingly high flexibility of Shapeoko-level stuff tempts me to DIY, but it's also probably easier to outsource. I am just not sure where to look for a real-world machine shop that can mill these for me. If you can think of a reliable forum, online community, or vendor that doesn't force me to learn just as much about designing pieces as DIYing, I'd love to know.
Thanks all.