Unless you have to do some crazy undercuts, you'll never need more than 3 axes. And even if you do, you can flip the part. A good Cam program and some ball endmills will do very complicated 3D machining.<p>We had a giant 5-axis Thermwood gantry router to make composite tooling - I think we used the additional axes only once - they are a lot more time consuming to program and can get out of tolerance much easier.
I think this would appeal to many more people if it were a machine the size of a Taig or Sherline. Although some of the concepts are transferable, there will be a lot of issues in building something this size which would not be relevant to a smaller machine.<p>Are there really that many people with the kind of space for this and the items it produces who want to build their own 5 axis mill?<p>I also wonder how many people need the parts produced by a 5 axis machine with its enormously greater hardware and software complexity. In most cases you could design what you need to be built on a 3 axis machine and assemble it. For under $2000, you can have a lot of fun by buying/assembling a Taig CNC mill with a 4th axis. 2 1/2D and 3D raster software is not crazy expensive or complicated.
You'd be surprised how much more you can find to do with simultaneous 5 axis, not to mention how much it can decrease machining time . . . you can use a relatively huge cutting tool and still get a great finish.
--Cheers!
Can someone who understands this space well tell me where something like RepRap (<a href="http://reprap.org/wiki/Main_Page" rel="nofollow">http://reprap.org/wiki/Main_Page</a>) compares to this, conceptually?