Deciding Between MPCNC and Lowrider

Mostly Printed CNC - MPCNC Advice
1

Hi all i’m a architecture student and after a few years messing around with 3d printing and recently buying a cheap 3018 for doing circut boards i’m planning on building a large format cnc machine. This machine would be used for tasks such milling out typographic landforms, 3d carving foam, cutting thin sheet metals and ideally i’d like to be able to do some aluminum to upgrade my smaller machine and make basic metal parts. The major design diffrences that have me torn between the MPCNC and Lowrider II are

  1. Z-Axis - the gantrey of the MPCNC means it's most stable when cutting raised stock close to the gantry and the frame must be built to the total height of the z-axis while the Low Rider can have a much larger z height for cutting softer materials like foam but maintain it's stability for low height cuts
  2. Tool changes - the design of the mpcnc seems like it would make it much easier to change tool when doing jobs that require tool changes while the Lowrider has the bit under the main gantry which seem like i might make it harder to acess.
  3. Aluminium performance - i've seen a lot of people cutting alumium using the MPCNC on the forum but substantually less about aluminum on the Lowrider so while i think the z axis design might provide better stability i'm unsure as toif this actually makes a diffrence.
  4. I have limited space to build so a lowrider build would be limited to a cutting area of a quater sheet 1200x600mm so not that disimillar to a size workable for the MPCNC but with a lot more tubing required for the MPCNC which is not cheap in my part of the world.
Thanks to anyone who has advice on which is the better option.
2

All the rest are simple with either machine…this is the kicker.

1-Yup.

2-Same, 611 just pops right out and you can rezero that way if you want.

3-This is extremely hard to put in words, I try on several pages. The machines can do anything you want, the size you build it makes it much better suited for certain things. A skill saw and a dremel are kinda the same thing but the size of them makes each well suited for specific things. A 4x8 router is great for plastic or softer sheet goods…not so much for metal. Can it, absolutely. Your opening statement says you want to build a giant router to do everything, it will, but it’s size determines what it will be best at. You really need to choose your use case. If you really need it all two of my machines are cheaper than one of any of the other CNC’s.

4-2’x4’ is a size that works in both…depending on what you really need it to do. My LR is that size and my MPCNC is 13’x13’ish.

3

Okay i think a smaller MPCNC around 400x600 sounds like the way to go then. I was mainly unsure if the stainless and zaxis design of the Lowrider made it able to compete with an appropriately ridged MPCNC when when dealing with aluminium. Thankyou for the advice i know you get questions like this a lot i just haden’t seen much directly compaireing the proformce of the two machines on anything other than size.