LR2 or LR4?

LowRider CNC Advice
1

I printed all the pieces for a LRv2 years ago. I assembled the full machine on a 4’x8’ table, but I never fully got it tuned up to where I was happy with it. Soon after getting it functional, I lost access to that workshop and had to disassemble the whole thing and it has been sitting in storage for 5 years. I am now considering putting a smaller CNC router in my garage, and I’m considering building a 2’x3’ table for one.

With all of that in mind, I can’t decide if I want to just reassemble the LRv2 that I have all of the hardware, prints, and controller for or if I want to upgrade to the latest and greatest v4, which would likely take me a few weeks to get all the parts re-printed and order the missing hardware.

Does anyone out there have experience with both the v2 and v4 designs that could tell me if it is worth it to reprint all the plastic and upgrade the the Jackpot controller?

2

I never ran a LR2.

If you had your LR2 fully assembled and working, then I’d advise you to use it, and consider using it to cut parts to upgrade it eventually to a LR4.

Since it’s in pieces and you need to build a table anyway, then this is a simple recommendation to make: Build a LR4 instead of reassembling the LR2.

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3

LR4 hands down no question at all. It is night and day better than the LR2

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4

The LR4 is far superior to the LR2.

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5

I think the point is not even being “better”, the LR4 is a machine that’s easy to assemble and will work 90% out of assembly

The LR2’s assembly is… mmmh… a nightmare :slight_smile: lots of parts, lots of different hardware, not designed for metric hardware, it was honestly really hard to assemble

The LR3 introduced standardized metric hardware, which simplified the build a lot, and the LR4 refined this and lowered the parts count

If you never fully built and tuned a lowrider, do yourself a favour, and start with the LR4 :slight_smile: Oh, and it’s a much more capable machine too in the end… but who cares if you don’t manage to build it first? :slight_smile:

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I appreciate everyone’s advice! Im glad that there seems to be a unanimous choice, that makes the decision much easier for me.

Thank you all

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