Best CNC for aluminum signs?

[letterworks]

Have you thought of a robot arm to automate the process? Actually could work ok for the corners. I assume the corners are the worst part. We've thought about such things but rarely have jobs so repetitive.

Other thoughts might be to stack the corners to route 10-20 with a jig and a regular router table. The shearing might have to be very consistant for that however.

 

[Signed Out]

I think the router is the optimal way to go, unless you'd want to source someone who could stamp the shape by the boatload, and either screen print or flatbed print them, but now you're just shifting labor from making the blanks to decorating the panels. The pricing may improve, but the job may actually become more tedious. I could see a robot arm working out with enough tuning, but I personally have no clue the cost of one nor the implementation costs of programming the functionality. My CNC brain thinks this is simple gcode, but it must also include some for or if and canned cycles that I've not had to get into. But seeing as how a guy on youtube used a robot arm to pick and place colored dominoes into a domino dispensing robot, rinse and repeat panel movements/rotation should be easy as pie.
Have you ever considered offering a comparable product like something semi rigid that you can roll print and then plot or run through a digital cutter instead? You could knock out 2,000 in under 8 hours doing something like thin polycarbonate or mylar, but it's obviously not going to be as resilient as an aluminum panel, and since these are warning signs, I'll wager this has all been considered and kiboshed.
What sort of netting is this about? Something like cruise/cargo ships? Or is it volleyball nets?

Robot arm seems like it would work, but I don't think I want to go down that rabbit hole? They won't go for anything less than aluminum, not even ACM. The netting is for batting cages, driving ranges, etc. anything with a net really.

I have plans to the city right now, hoping to get approval for an 80'x40' addition to our shop, which should go up in the spring, ready for use early summer if I'm lucky. I don't have room for a CNC until I get this building up, but will likely try to get one in and setup as soon as I have the space.

From what all has been said here, I think I'll be looking for CNC, no flatbed cutters. With overkill vaccumm and a high powered spindle, and ATC. The shop sabre is510 looks preety good, nice and beefy. But what spindle to get with it? According to website it comes with either a 1 hp or 3 hp routher, but has optional 5 or 10 hp spindles, but shows no pricing.

Anybody have a realistic idea what a new shopsabre IS 510 would cost with the 10 hp ATC spindle, camera, vaccum, and dust collection?

 

[Signed Out]

What would you say the smallest room you would want to build for your router table be? Also, how big of a deal to load sheets onto the bed from the side rather than the front or back, having to rotate the sheet 90* as you put it on the table? The 80x40 we are putting up is mostly for vehicle bays, and office/lobby, with about 40x15 left for future growth. I could build a CNC room there, but don't really want it right next to my office.. was thinking I might move printers into that area at some point to make more room in the "clean" side of my current shop. Current shop is 60x35, split into 2 35x30's, one side clean work, one side dirty work, and we have a 65x25 install bay that we rent next door (not for much longer). Ideally I'd like to put a CNC room in my dirty shop, but because of the layout, that would most easily be done by having to load sheet into the room from the side, rather than the front.

 

[johnnysigns]

We load our Axyz from the front or the sides. I don't think it would be a big deal to have your workflow function that way. Here's some paperwork we have on floor print for a 5x10ft based machine.

 

[Signed Out]

So would building a room for a router in the corner of the shop, where the back of the router is 1-2' from the wall, right side(when standing at front looking at the back) is 3' from wall, front is 3-4' from wall, and the left side is 3'from the wall, but this wall has a 6' double door on this wall for loading sheets.

 

[Signed Out]

Ooof, that's tight but I don't see why it wouldn't work if you are shooting for a 4x8 or 5x10, and not imagining cutting sheets over that size. Touch base with the folks over there concerning overall dimension of the table, my 6' table has a top that is 83" across, and another 18" worth of gantry & the tread that the wires are routed through, but I'm not sure how that scales. Are the double doors totalling 6', or would that be 2 6' wide doors? My concern would be forklifting a pallet into the room would have to come from the long side of the pallet, and I still have nightmares from the time we got 25 sheets of acm and the forklift operator just pulled the pallet apart trying to tilt the forks on the short side.
Since you don't have a lot of room, here, where do you plan to store material? I guess if you're processing everything with prints before cutting it doesn't need to be stored in the CNC room, that's just where my mind goes.
Did you ever check on your building's power supply capacity? On our 3 phase 240v setup, it draws ~63 amps (FLA full load amps, that'll be the power consumption while running), but on startup it draws 775 amps for 3 seconds or so. This required a special slow blow breaker and is essentially all of the power capacity supplied to my facility... We were very close to paying to pull a new service line from a transmission line several blocks away, and that would have cost tons more depending if the utility company billed me for it.

I meant to say, distance from walls would be to the gantry for the sides. A question I have is does it matter which side of the table you would load from?

Attached a rough idea of what shop layout could be after the addition, and if we put a cnc router in. The dirty side of the shop, where the cnc is in the layout, is where my power comes in, I have 3 phase here now. Should I be considering having a new power hookup brought in for the addition, so I could keep the CNC and other dirty shop equip on a separate panel from the rest of the shop? Admittedly I don't know electrical all that well.

Another concern you all have helped me to see, the noise is from the vacumm more so than the router? And I should put the pump outside for the noise. Are you enclosing these to keep the noise down outside (and the elements)? Where I have the CNC located now, is right near customer parking.. so that might be a problem for the noise, but the dust? Or I guess that goes thorugh a filter so there shoudln't really be a plume of dust bellowing out? But hot air, 200F? Is this not ideal?

 

[Scotchbrite]

For what it's worth, we put our CNC on a separate panel closer to the machine.

There isn't any dust from our vacuum. There is a filter on it for one thing. Our shop is 60x80 with 18ft sidewalls and the vacuum sits back in a corner that is basically the furthest from where anyone works. It is outside the CNC space, but still in the shop. It's kind of blocked by a spray booth and the CNC room, but it's completely open to the shop as a whole. The noise is only is issue if you're within about 30ft of it.

 

[johnnysigns]

Power wise our AXYZ needs a 30 amp 3ph 220V connect for the CNC itself, a 40 amp 3ph 220V connect for the hold down Vac, standard 120V outlet for the camera setup that also powers the Jet chip vacuum we use. We have a single phase 220V connect elsewhere in the shop for our larger compressor which feeds the 8-9 CFMs the CNC needs for the pop up pins and ATC spindle. If you talk to whichever CNC vendor you're thinking about going with they should be able to give you a list of stuff you'll need space and power wise.

You can def make an enclosure for the hold down Vac or move it as suggested wherever you need to. We're in the middle of trying to locate our pump underneath our table so we can line all the shrouds that are normally in place around the frame with Foam to cut down on residual noise.

The side loading you show looks fine from my perspective.

 

[Signed Out]

Yes the pole is a column, can't move it. Attached some better mockups. Considering putting the CNC in the new shop, will be much easier to put the pump outside there, nothing around it. But noise level for the vehicle installers, and myself in the office is my concern with this. Along with not really having sperated clean shop and dirty shop, and have to cram the printers/ploter/laminators all in the same room. Not really wanting to put the laminators or printers in the "old dirty shop" near the overhead door.. Ugh gotta figure it out now though, because placement of the doors between the old shop and new addition will be pretty crucial.

 

[Signed Out]

My neighbors office is right at the northwest corner of my building, I don't want to put the pump there if it's just going to be loud for them. Really not liking my layout options with the CNC in the new addition. Also considering this layout(attached), spinning the CNC room to front load. If a good job is done of soundproofing, would I be better off keeping the vacuum pump in the router room? With this I can make the room a little bigger, but would the pump go under the table anyway? It's a block wall that separates the 2 sides of the shop (right side of cnc room in this layout)

Yes big boat graveyard around here, some of them get resurrected from time to time though. Boat building company across the street, we don't wrap many of them, but do a lot of lettering, stripping.

 

[Raum Divarco]

Power wise our AXYZ needs a 30 amp 3ph 220V connect for the CNC itself, a 40 amp 3ph 220V connect for the hold down Vac, standard 120V outlet for the camera setup that also powers the Jet chip vacuum we use. We have a single phase 220V connect elsewhere in the shop for our larger compressor which feeds the 8-9 CFMs the CNC needs for the pop up pins and ATC spindle. If you talk to whichever CNC vendor you're thinking about going with they should be able to give you a list of stuff you'll need space and power wise.

You can def make an enclosure for the hold down Vac or move it as suggested wherever you need to. We're in the middle of trying to locate our pump underneath our table so we can line all the shrouds that are normally in place around the frame with Foam to cut down on residual noise.

The side loading you show looks fine from my perspective.

what type of foam are you using to reduce the noise?

 

[Signed Out]

For foam, I could use whatever, a few of my uncles happen to be in the foam/upholstery distribution business.

Map is actually south up, but we can call it north for ease. To the East (right) is nothing, some woods and a creek. So directing the noise that direction would be ideal if outside. I did just get a quote from axyz for a 5x10 infinite, plan on getting some more info from them on the vacuum. Just trying to get it figured out, without the salesman spin, before really starting to work out a deal.

 

[johnnysigns]

what type of foam are you using to reduce the noise?

I'm honestly not sure yet, I've got to see what works best for sound insulation.

 

[Raum Divarco]

PET acoustic felt is popular but it is expensive.
You can also get convoluted foam from many suppliers like Uline or Amazon.
Those work very well too.
If you arent getting fancy with water cooling etc you can just get a nice fan to draaw out the warm air in the boxed area.

there are plenty you can buy but the nice ones are all over $4k.
You can build a nice 2x4 frame with foam liners and a fan/vent for under $1000