Archive for August, 2007
CNC Hobby Growth Story
CNC as a hobby has really seen a huge growth spurt over the last 8 years. I think I stepped into it about two years after it started cooking in the late 90s. When I jumped in there were a few CNC Groups going already and about three different CNC Plasma Tables available at the hobby level. I don’t know where the other machine types were at the time because I came in through the plasma path. I would guess they were further behind as CNC Plasma Cutters was one of the first areas of CNC to take off in the Hobby arena.
Most of the growth I would attribute to the Internet. Groups formed, ideas were shared. Feedback was given. People started making “chips” and didn’t look back. The Internet brought a very expensive technology into garages across the country. When I built my $4000 CNC Plasma Table a hobbyist class machine was around $10,000 and a commercial machine was $100,000 to as high as you wanted to go.