Results of Our CNC Machine Survey

Recently, we started a new survey to determine what sorts of CNC machines the majority of our readers were using.

In a broad sense, the different machine types fell into these categories:

 

 

Mills, Lathes, and CNC Routers were the most common machine types.  The category of “Machines for cutting sheet material” consisting of Plasma Tables, Lasers, and Waterjets would be close to CNC Routers if considered together.  The most common machines in the “Other” category were press brakes, waterjets, CNC’d Knee Mills, and Tormach mills, which makes good sense to me.  I didn’t have a good option for any of those.

If we try to tease apart the “Pro vs Hobby” contingents, that’s harder.  If you use a horizontal machining center, waterjet, EDM, or a turning center, you’re probably not a hobbyist (or if you are, you’re quite advanced).  If you’re using a desktop mill or lathe, you’re probably not a professional.  But there are machines in the middle.  There are definitely both hobbyists and folks making a living with their Tormach mills, for example.  Another tough one to assign is CNC Knee Mills, a very common choice in the “Other” category.  Based on choosing to put some of these in the middle as undecided and sticking to choices that are more unambiguous, here is a rough attempt at the Pro vs Hobby question:

 

 

The sense I’ve always gotten from other surveys and software sales (it’s pretty obvious when you have the name of a CNC company on the order) is that the CNCCookbook readership is about 60% professional CNC’er and 40% hobbyist.  That’s certainly compatible with these results depending on the how the “Undecided” category gets allocated.

Thanks for participating in our survey.  We’ll let it continue to run as we do the others.  Feel free to visit our Survey Page to see what else you can learn about CNCCookbook readers.