Steel or not?

[frogeye]

Hi All,

I'm just about to dip my first toe into the waters of CNC.

My question is in the view of the enlightened members of this group, are the ORAC and TRIAC machines suitable for machining steel. This would be in a model engineering/hobby environment, not a production workshop. There again, you never know !
Cheers,
Paul

[Triac whizz]

Yeah, work great, got one of each, but....

don't expect much from the controller - the technology is 20 years old (maybe more) If you get these machines they are well built but expect to refit the control system with something like Mach3.

Unless yuou find a fanuc controlled triac, they're not too bad but limited on the size of the program you can load - with mach3 the only size limit is the size of your hard drive

Orac's program size is even smaller at around 500 lines (if I remember right) assuming you can get the computer to talk to the machine;)

[Steve]

If you are looking to buy try and make sure you see the machine running and it has the software and cables with it.

If not make a low offer and plan to have to do a retrofit.

The machines are quite capable of cutting steel and seem to last for ever mechanically.

[frogeye]

Thanks Guys,
I'm in the last few minutes of an auction..... should have asked what the going rate is for an ORAC. I'll post the result!