I am familiar with the safety hazards, which I suppose are one of the positives of the Nomad, since it is enclosed and may be more suited to dust control.
Excellent! The Nomad enclosure gives one a “head start”. Negative pressure, dust heads, dust collectors and dust separators finish the job.
An enclosure for an SO3 doesn’t have to be complex or expensive. Some examples (and still growing) may be found here:
So many interesting activities (telescope mirror making for example) carry these sorts of risks.
WOOHOO! Astrophysics in my background. Mirror making. Foucault tests. Diffraction/ring patterns. Parabolize.
Yes, the grits and glass particles can be nasty.
However, my issue really boils down to whether the SO3 is able to produce PCB milling results comparable to the Nomad, so I really hope we can confine the thread to that specific issue.
Both machines are more than capable of PCB work - there are examples of both on this forum and a SO3 forum. The Nomad has a spindle by default. It’s smaller and stiffer than the SO3.
The SO3 can have a spindle and adding a sea-of-holes metal bed will stiffen it quite nicely. @WillAdams can point to some additional stiffening things that can be done. I would certainly get the limit/home kit. The Dewalt router seems to be the hot choice now-a-days.
The smallest repeatability (accuracy/precision) goes to the Nomad.
Unless you line widths are incredibly small, the differences are not likely to affect the quality of the PCB. The size of the PCB and other projects would seem to be the deciding factor. The budget would have to take in account any enclosure and air handling.
Would being off by 2-5 thousandths make any difference to the PCB work you’re doing?
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