I see you already have the robot, ASEA by the look of it. My spin on it would be that a Robots has its place, especially if you want to cut parts out of a preassembled shape for example and do all kind of vertical & horizontal cuts etc, but if you are doing all the cutting on a horizontal surface out of plain sheet, a robot is a bit of overkill, You will probabally need AHC whether a robot or gantry is used, were you thinking of designing that also? Why does it have to be a one sided gantry? Also would'nt 4ft6"x10" be stretching the work envelope of the robot? ( although I took a second look and it appears it also runs on rails!). Were you looking at implementing a teach function on the robot? I would say Camsoft professional should handle either robot or gantry, although with the rail function I can see the robot being pretty program design intensive . Do you have the amplifiers for the motors on the robot?
Al
CNC, Mechatronics Integration and Custom Machine Design
“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”
Albert E.