Home-made CNC router

[DICKEYBIRD]

Chuck & Steve mentioned their interest in a simple CNC router over in the "Curved Spoke Flywheel" thread so I thhought I should post some pics of mine.

I built this machine from Dan Mauch's circuit board driller article in Nut's & Volts mag back in '95 or so. His plan was modified quite a bit to strengthen it up for router cutting of balsa & ply parts for my r/c airplane designs. The electronics came from MaxNC and being old, makes for a slow & weak machine but that's all that was available cheap at the time. There's a plethora of stuff available on the web now. It's pretty darn accurate as well.

I only do 2D stuff since I haven't learned 3D CAD yet. I use TurboCAD to draw the parts and convert the .dxf's to G-Code using Yeager Automation's ACEConverter....a free program that works great.

Since jumping into metalwork in 2004, I have done very little CNC routing but have found a few ways to use it. I've drawn up hole locations and used the CNC process to spot some accurate holes. I have a hankering to mount my spin indexer on the table, put a little diamond wheel in the router, write some simple code and have a go at sharpening a few endmills. We'll see what happens.

I use an OLD 386 laptop in the DOS mode to run it since the MAXNC software only runs in DOS. If you have any questions, I'll do my best to answer them.

 

[gilessim]

that looks like a very useful piece of kit that you've made there, I've been thinking about something like that for a while, I saw this on ebay, unfortunately its all in italian, but it's made from mdf,and includes just about everything ,you can get the idea from the pics, there are several similar for sale around Italy all made by very small firms ,I don't know how valid they might be, but saying that, there are some very clever people here!, anyway here's the link http://cgi.ebay.it/Meccanica-elettronica-Fresa-Cnc-Pantografo-Fresatrice_W0QQitemZ140187938238QQihZ004QQcategoryZ92150QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

[DICKEYBIRD]

Yup, moving gantry style is probably a superior design. Here's a great resource for plans & and electronics. Dave's a great guy.

http://www.hobbycnc.com/plans.php

 

[Brass_Machine]

A lot of free plans\help and stuff HERE

Joes' plans look pretty good...


Eric

 

[gilessim]

thanks for the info guys!, Dave's plans look simple enough!, and I'll wade through all the CNC forum stuff later,there seems to be a lot there!!...Giles

 

[cfellows]

Thanks for the pics, Dickeybird. I'm currently leaning toward a moving table similar to yours. I've clearly got a lot of research to do, although I may have a lot of what I need already. I bought a three axis stepper controller board about a year ago. I've yet to try to use it.

I'm kind of liking the 13" x 13" model at this site: http://www.solsylva.com/

Chuck

 

[DICKEYBIRD]

Wow, great site Chuck! Makes me want to build a new machine, Mine's sort of, uhh, outdated now.

 

[DICKEYBIRD]

All this CNC talk got me dusting the thing off and actually using it today to make a Christmas gift for my 1 1/2 yr. old grandson Cade. His father's a die-hard U/T fan so I decided to make him something with the state outline on it. I traced a .bmp of the state in CAD and added the letters with DeskEngrave. The stain's drying now and it'lll get a couple coats of satin polyu tomorrow.

Somebody caled him "Cade Man" (ryhmes with Cave man I guess) and the nickname stuck.

 

[cfellows]

Gosh darn it, I almost had this CNC thing out of my mind and now you've got me thinking about it again!

Chuck

 

[DICKEYBIRD]

Sorry 'bout that Chuck. ;D

Actually, I've kinda screwed myself. This is the 1st time I've run the router table since I got serious about the machining stuff a couple years ago. I was mesmerized by the silly thing effortlessly cranking out all those random lines & curves and now I wanna CNC my X-3 mill.

Fortunately there ain't NO WAY that'll slip under the financial radarscreen here at home. :'( I'd have to win the lottery 1st.

 

[shred]

Sorry 'bout that Chuck. ;D

Actually, I've kinda screwed myself. This is the 1st time I've run the router table since I got serious about the machining stuff a couple years ago. I was mesmerized by the silly thing effortlessly cranking out all those random lines & curves and now I wanna CNC my X-3 mill.

Fortunately there ain't NO WAY that'll slip under the financial radarscreen here at home. :'( I'd have to win the lottery 1st.

That's my problem with my little CNC-- I spend the whole time watching it run because it's so cool and thus wasting the time I could have used to do other stuff. :-\ I guess if I was making dozens of the same part I'd get bored and go away, but I rarely do that.