New member - Utah, U.S.
 

Hello everyone,
I have been reading and studying the Mech Mate for the past month or so. I forget when I joined in. I have had alot of experence with CNC tooling. I have been in sheet metal work for the past 30 years, and have been operating CNC plasmas since 1993 and CNC waterjets for almost 3 years. I was very impressed with the quality of the Mech Mate design and shop drawings. Particularly with the way the Mech Mate can be adapted for different applications besides routers.
I plan on building a 48" X 120" Mech Mate. But with a different change to the design. I want to build a rotating 360 degree (CNC operated if possible) head into the Z axis so that I can use the machine similar to a knife blade for vinyl cutting, but attach various sized small air driven belt sanders to make sanding geometric designs in metal sheets for architectural sheet metal work.

Rob,

Welcome to the Forum. Good luck on your build. Your rich CNC experience should help a bunch. That forth axis sounds interesting.

One small thing, MechMate is one word...just has a middle capital. It doesn't make much difference now, but when you get done with your build and are ready to put on your Logo's...

Regards,
John

Hi Rob, welcome!

Sounds like your experience will bring a lot to this group. The rotating head will be interesting. Did you know that Mach3 has a facility to rotate a head tangential to the direction of the xy cut? (will align a knife blade for example). Most guys just use a castor knife for vinyl cutting.

Thank you for the welcome. And thank you Gerald for the information on the
Mach3 software. I was hoping that someone could point me in the right direction for the CADCAM software I need to run my soon to be built MechMate.
Since I work for a steel fabrication company getting metal will not be a problem. We also have a laser at my workplace, so I will be nesting the DXF files later this week, and get them lasered and fabricated.

Welcome Rob. I would suggest you look at the Vectric Cad/Cam software. I found them the easiest to master. I would like to get the Aspire software, but for pure hobby like mine at this stage the price is just a bit high

Hi Rob,

It's good to know that someone else from Utah is on the forum. Please call anytime, (801) 254-3900.

-Mike Richards