Help! Woodworking CNC Purchase Advice

Welcome to the forum! Take a look at CAMaster and ShopBot. They are in the US, machines built here, and have excellent support. I built my own CNC machine but if I were to buy one it would be CAMaster.

Many (most?) Laguna machines are rebranded Chinese. In the range you're looking at they may not be, though, just not sure.

Thank you so much David! I'll definitely look into them. I appreciate the input.

G'day from Australia.

Welcome to the forum. Bailey.

Thank you James! Any opinions on what CNC machine I should get?

Sorry, Bailey, I am not a CNC user.
I have enough fun with my routers.......

Well I appreciate the hello!

Very impressive having a fine woodworking degree. Congrats!

Welcome to the forum Bailey.

Oscar36 said:

Very impressive having a fine woodworking degree. Congrats!

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Thank you Oscar!

old55 said:

Welcome to the forum Bailey.

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Thanks Ross! Happy to be here.

Shop Sabre is another company i'd recommend.
I have a Pro404 4x4 ATC w/ all the bells & whistles and it was under $50k in '18
A 4x8 would be a few bucks more
Nothing but good support when needed.

I'd probably buy a ShopSabre or Camaster before a Laguna. As David said, Laguna tools are all Chinese imports. ShopSabre and Camaster (and ShopBot) are the only US manufacturers I'm aware of.
Camaster has a very active user forum, and their users seem to love them.
To be honest, I'd seriously consider buying an AVID CNC Kit for $15,000 or so. Won't have an ATC, but will be just as capable as a $50,000 machine. It would be a good machine to learn on. And it will pay for itself, if you actually have viable products to make.

Thank you Ger!!

Sorry but just curiosity. What type of furniture are you planning on making.

Old guy. Two careers and now retired but designing and building furniture kept me same during my first very stressful career. Out of all my hobbies, woodworking is my first love.

Hi Oscar! I want to keep my options open, to see what I fall in love with making over the long term. I shine best in making creative things--especially for kids like workbenches, doll houses, treasure chests, I made my daughter a huge jewelry armoire, etc. But I would love to get into huge topo maps, large scale home art, etc. I've made a lot of furniture and it's been very fulfilling, but only in that it has solved a problem in my house. I'm not sure I want to be doing it every day for the rest of my life. But who knows!

I taught furniture design for the last 40+ years, and oversaw CNC use for my classes. If making furniture is your goal then I highly recommend a CNC from probotix.com or at least one with similar attributes. That is an open t-slot aluminum extrusion frame with nothing running underneath it. They offer machines with ATC (tool changer), and bit height setting. They come ready to run using a PC with LinuxCNC to control their CNCs. Use your choice of CAD/CAM software but I'll recommend Aspire from Vectric.com. If you are curious what is possible with an open frame here are a few posts of mine about what my Probotix CNC can do:

I've also posted many of my own projects there, and some educational wisdom too. 4D Furniture Thoughts. With a CNC that you can clamp fixtures and jigs to, and hold parts at any angle between vertical and horizontal, you can make almost any furniture part including the joinery. I'll also recommend getting their rotary axis add-on. I just finished a little pedestal table and used my rotary axis to make the center post. We didn't use the rotary axis often where I taught, but it was extremely useful for making critical parts for student projects over the years we had it. Tapered legs were the most common request. A mug with a sign wave groove around it for an aluminum inlay that also became the handle was a rare but interesting use. The folks at Probotix will also make custom configurations of their machines, and anything they make will likely be easily within your budget.
4D

I would suggest looking at the Vectrics Software 1st. They have a way of doing large pieces using a registration system so you can do a big piece on a smaller machine. I am sure you know a CNC machine is great for repetitive work but very time consuming for one off products. Most of the furniture artists here in the Santa Fe area are commissioned for pieces and do a lot of hand work.