Digital Router Fence System

[upscale]

Lee Valley is selling a digital router fence system. CNC on the cheap!

[Ed Pawlowski]

Cheaper yet on the US page

I can see some uses for it. I'd just not use it enough to justify the money though.

[woodchucker]

Same one Rockler was selling probably.

I'm not impressed. If I want CNC, I would buy CNC. That's not something I would buy.

[Puckdropper]

[e-mail] wrote in news:5rlv9ad801m551m650uq0vli0sesn8iao7@

4ax.com:

I wouldn't call it CNC. It's just a digital router fence.

If you're interested in CNC on the cheap, take a look at the Silhouette Cameo. It's almost, but not quite, CNC for less than $200. It only cuts extremely thin materials and scribes thicker ones, but maxes out around .040".

Puckdropper

[Ed Pawlowski]

Not all that practical in the woodshop where a lot of cuts would be .750 thick material

[Puckdropper]

Ed Pawlowski wrote in news: [e-mail]:

True. It's usefulness would be limited to templates in the the woodshop. If you're looking for just CNC, that's basically what you get. For cheap woodshop CNC, you'll have to keep looking.

I've wondered if you could attach a spinning cutter instead of the blade, but haven't really pursued that.

Puckdropper

[Brewster]

My wife just got one of those for her glass work (to make templates). I look at it as being one of those HP pen plotters with a knife installed instead of the pen (probably uses a similar vector graphics interface).

Time will tell since it is really the software that determines how useful something like this will be.

-BR

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[Larry Blanchard]

Back in the dark ages of computing, Calcomp fitted a cutter to one of their large flatbed pen plotters and we used it to cut out circuit diagrams at 100 times actual size which were then photo reduced.

If you think getting an exact depth with a router bit is a pain, try adjusting a cutter to cut through a film a few thousandth thick but not through the clear substrate below it which wasn't much thicker!

[Electric Comet]

Cheap is relative and for me that's not cheap at all. I looked at it and am I right that all it does is move the fence? I must be missing something else about that system.

[Ed Pawlowski]

I think the CNC reference was more in jest as it is far from a real CNC setup. But. . . it does do a simple function accurately and repetitively. I can think of uses for it, just not enough for me to justify the price.

[Puckdropper]

Brewster wrote in news:m7rq4h$ul6$ [e-mail]:

You can use something other than Silhouette Studio if you want to. I use CadStd to do my drawing, then export it as DXF and convert it to the proprietary SD card format. I don't know if other software like Make The Cut (tm) can save things to the SD card.

If the device is connected to the PC, there's the option of a printer drive that you can install and basically "print" directly from just about any program.

You can call it many things... two axis CNC, a plotter, a die cutter, a printer with a blade (people seem to understand that). Call it late for dinner if you want, on a compliated drawing it'll be busy anyway. :-)

Puckdropper