Cheap CNC Router

thingiverse

One of my homemade CNC machines. This is a relatively cheap version. The linear guides consists of 608zz bearings and plumbing pipe NEW version available here:http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1659021 Instructions BOM: Plumbing pipe ½" 21,3mm outside diameter: 2x550mm 2x270mm 2x776mm 42x 608ZZ bearings 12x 1½" U-bolts (see picture) 2 metres of 8mm threaded rod 6x M8 long nuts (coupling nut for assembling two rods) 32x M6x50mm bolts 32x M6 (10mm diameter, 20mm in length) furniture assembly nuts (see picture) 24x M8X16mm bolts 24x M8 Nuts Aluminium angle 20x20mm 1.5mm thickness Around 2m M5 threaded rod for mounting the steppers and the dremel 52x M5 nuts 16x M5 spacers Rubber fuelhose with inner diameter of 5-6mm for holding the dremel and for steppercouplings. 22mm MDF - for all the parts Electronics: 3 Nema 23 steppers Any stepper driverboard ( i can recommend those from http://cnc4you.co.uk/ or gecko G540) Power supply according to the driverboard and stepper specifications And of course, a Dremel more parts to come... In this version i have used a cheap china stepper driver board from ebay. I can only say that you get what you pay for! It is possible to get it to work with the cheap boards, but you have to go really slow to avoid missing steps. They are not designed very good, and tweaks found on the net does not make them much better. I have used Gecko G540 with great succes, it is a superb board. But also a breakoutboard combined with the cheap stepper drivers from the link in the BOM does a great job like the Gecko. Software used for running the machine: Mach3 Linux EMC2 CAM program used: Lazycam Unfortunately i only have a very poor video of the machine in action. I have sold it, so i can't make a new video. The video is played at played at 4 times original speed.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEzmb7wuGx0 The thing is marked as work in progress as i will continue to fill out the BOM and also write some instructions if anyone is showing interest in this.