What's it worth?

[cmykpro]

We recently acquired a Vision Engraving & Routing 1624. The unit is from 1999 and we know very little about it. We do not have the software to run it so i'm not sure if it runs but it looks like it's been very well taken care of. I have no need for it and was curious what kind of value it may hold? Any ideas?
EDIT: We were able to get power to it and all the motors work great however im not sure if you can turn on the actual router motor from the control panel without the software?

Thanks!

 

[TammieH]

The software makes a huge difference, we have an ancient engraver, the compute that drives it actually runs on 5.25" floppies. Long story...anyways, we had to step backwards because the comp that use to run the engraver died and we did not have the software, and we were not able to purchase it anywhere.

Basically its worth more to the right person, you may be able to find someone that has one already and would like a backup.

Without the software is a paperweight.

 

[cmykpro]

The software makes a huge difference, we have an ancient engraver, the compute that drives it actually runs on 5.25" floppies. Long story...anyways, we had to step backwards because the comp that use to run the engraver died and we did not have the software, and we were not able to purchase it anywhere.

Basically its worth more to the right person, you may be able to find someone that has one already and would like a backup.

Without the software is a paperweight.

I contacted Vision and they said it will work with their latest software which is $600. I would assume someone would rather buy $600 in software plus my machine at a discounted price vs. $12k for new. But I am not an expert with engravers so we shall see...

 

[TammieH]

I would see if my boss would like to purchase it, but she won't do anything until the old engraver is unusable. LOL Serious!
Over a year ago she talked like she was going to get a new plotter, before this one dies... still using our old FC4100-75

 

[xxtoni]

We were in a similar situation a while back and I would have appreciated some help back then so I'm here to pass the wisdom along.

Last year or so we had quite a few CNC jobs to do and outsourcing it cost not only quite a bit of money but it took very long. Something that we could do in half an hour ourselves would have to wait for days to have it outsourced. We didn't quite want to invest in a big CNC at that point but we found a small, used CNC router for a bargain price so we decided to get that.

Anyway we went ahead and bought the router and brought it to our shop. It did have software but it was on an ancient PC which didn't even have support for USB drives. After a few days of trying to make it work I decided to convert it to Mach3.

It took a bit of doing but after a full day of research and experimentation I got it to work with Mach3.

Mach3 is under $200 and you will also need some kind of CAM software to convert your designs to g-code. You can use Illustrator or Corel Draw as your design software, from there you just export to a DXF and import it into your CAM software where you create the toolpaths and export the G-code. Then you import the g-code into Mach3 and run it.

I can't guarantee that it will work with your machine but there is no reason that it shouldn't. Both Mach3 and CamBam offers trials so you can try before you buy.

You will probably need a few days to get going but it shouldn't cost you more than $300 to get everything up and running if it works with Mach3 and CamBam.

Hope this helps, if you have any questions please let me know.