The robots have landed... Cheap CNC woodworking at Sears!

Here at Because We Can, we're very pro-robot. Already your house is fulla them, and so why not your home woodshop as well? We've seen these online for a little while, and it looks like Sears just picked them up for sale. It's a mini-CNC 3-axis desktop router for $1800 or so : It's not very big and it's not very fancy or fast but hey, it's cheap and small.

 

Perfect for a model maker, hobbyist, and wannabe mad scientists. I kind of doubt it's claim of "Allows you to achieve professional results regardless of space, time, budget or skill" however it does look like it could do small things well. I haven't used one personally, however it looks like it's getting good reviews.

It appears that one axis is a large 'treadmill' belt that moves the material back and forth under the cutting head. This leads me to believe that it wouldn't work so hot for things that need to be perfectly accurate, and couldn't cut aluminum (items might slip on the belt under load). But with it's 1hp router you wouldn't want to try to cut heavy stuff anyhow. Probably why it's billed as a 'Carving Machine'. It can handle material 14 1/2" wide, and up to 5" thick, but it appears that it can only cut 1" deep at most. So no cutting huge slabs of wood but for decorative flat 3D carved panels and cutting out small wood parts it would be useful. Comes with some basic CAM software to boot. What fun!