Newbie looking for advice on SB selection

[scottp55]

Dan,
Thanks for quote thing, never used it.
You might want to wait a hair for Aspire 9, as Michael M. and others are already throwing serious hints(hope it goes for VCP also)
Pennywood is all set, as upgrades are free for the first year...saving my pennies here, as VCP 8 was such a mind blower being able to get rid of Cut3D except for maybe 4 sided machining.
Sooo much easier to toolpath/preview now.
Can't wait to see what 9 brings to the table....VCP 8 being halfway to Aspire now
Glad someone with a full size is helping!!
I'm only really fair at Teeny stuff
Days long cuts scare me even machine is only 40' away... I LIKE the small cut times!
Longest cut was 19 hours for the Allagash topo, and couldn't sleep a wink!
OP(Pennywood), it really depends on what you would LOVE to do, as far as detail, if bills to pay and you don't have the market, bottom line will suffer
scott

[tri4sale]

Dan,
Thanks for quote thing, never used it.
You might want to wait a hair for Aspire 9, as Michael M. and others are already throwing serious hints(hope it goes for VCP also)
Pennywood is all set, as upgrades are free for the first year...saving my pennies here, as VCP 8 was such a mind blower being able to get rid of Cut3D except for maybe 4 sided machining.
Sooo much easier to toolpath/preview now.
Can't wait to see what 9 brings to the table....VCP 8 being halfway to Aspire now
Glad someone with a full size is helping!!
I'm only really fair at Teeny stuff
Days long cuts scare me even machine is only 40' away... I LIKE the small cut times!
Longest cut was 19 hours for the Allagash topo, and couldn't sleep a wink!
OP(Pennywood), it really depends on what you would LOVE to do, as far as detail, if bills to pay and you don't have the market, bottom line will suffer
scott

Yes, I'm waiting for 9 to come out, seen a few hints about it too. I contacted Vetric and they give a 90 day upgrade guarantee (if I bought 8.5 and 9 came out in 90 days it was free) but 1 year for new purchases (buy 8.5 new and 9 comes out in 1 year it was free) so I decided to wait for 9.

I'm trying to find me a desktop in my budget for some small and portable jobs, key is "in my budget"! Long cuts scare me too, since machine is in my attached garage, if something bad happened could be really bad really fast. Longest cut I've done is about 2 hours. I break my jobs up into parts so that I can stop running and come back to later if needed rather than run a really long cut.

Saving pennies, nickels and dimes, want Aspire 9 when it comes out, an indexer, a desktop.... list never ends.

[Pennywood]

Thanks guys, for all the help! I'm actually leaning towards the desktop max with the spindle and software, now. I'd spend most of my allocated funds on a small alpha, with no money left for a spindle or software if I went that way. The desktop seems like a good way to discover if this is something I want to persue, and I'll have the goodies to experiment a bit.
I tried to quote text in my response, but only managed to corrupt my reply, and retype it.
Scott, I don't have much pressure to make the cnc pay bills, but if I can't find a way to make money with it, I probably won't expand to a bigger machine any time soon. Those carvings you make are really cool!