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(August 2006) posted on Sun Aug 27, 2006

Digital printing meets CNC routing.

By Chris Morrison, Kathi Morrison

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Let's face it, digital printing is showing up just about everywhere. Small shops are jumping on board with low-cost printers. Grand-format printers are becoming affordable to even mid-sized shops. A holdout has always been the manufacturing/routing side of the business.

You know these guys. They can create wood signs that appear to take weeks to carve. They can crank out unique sign shapes all day long without breaking a sweat. Sure, you can consider CNC routing a digital function, but the types of files you feed these monsters are typically vector or line based.

So, does such a shop need a wide-format digital printer? The shop could offer a wide range of products, but, until recently, CNC operators would rarely see a digital print in their area. A new development is changing all of that. The industry, in essence, is giving the CNC router eyes.

MultiCam and its products

MultiCam Inc.'s routers are robust, fast and affordable, ranging from the entry-level 1000 series all the way up to the giant MT Pro series. They also offer a line of waterjets, plasma cutters, knife cutters and lasers.

Before we begin discussing the MultiVision option, let's take a closer look at some of the MultiCam products. We'll concentrate on the 3000 series, as this is probably a fairly standard configuration.

MultiCam's devices are solidly built with heavy tables. An optional vacuum hold-down system ensures the media (Fig. 1) is held firmly in place. Talk about power, the 3000 series (Fig. 2) can handle either a 5.5- up to a 10-HP spindle. With a rapid traverse speed up to 1,700 in./sec., the 3000 will make fast work of a sheet of material. Choose a 50 x 50-in. table size if you're working mainly with half sheets, or select an 80 x 145-in. table if you work with full sheets.

All MultiCam routers come with an easy-to-use control system, a handheld device that interfaces directly to the router. The controller (Fig. 3) offers various controls at the operator's fingertips. It boasts a 1000-line buffer that accepts both HPGL and G-Code commands. It also interfaces via a TCP/IP interface to the DNC (PC-operational) software. The software includes a job-preview function, a job-history function and a job-reporter function that can be used for shop planning.