CNC 1

I became interested in CNC since the first video I saw on youtube. There was a lot of things to learn before I was able to build my own CNC router.

I ordered particle board cutting and assembled everything from wood, plexiglass and alluminium. Originally I was going to build router as closable box. But wooden walls were vibrating to much and making a lot of noice, so at end I had to cut out as much particle board as possible.

Everything was meant to be cheap, because I did not want to buy expensive components and screw everything up with absence of expirience. Regular M10 rods are used as feed-screws.

 

This is “backlash nut” design.

   

Other parts are shown above.

Router was controlled by Mach3 software running on notebook, connected to self-designed 3 axis STEP-DIP stepper motor controller.  Computer ATX power supply was used to to provide power to controller and motors.


I used dremel and regular drill as spindle.

   

The accuracy of cutting is ~0.2mm. Actually it is much less then I can measure. The main problem of this design is low stiffness. Under some conditions spindle can start to vibrate and cut incorrectly.

After playing for a while, I disassebled it because it had low stiffness, produced a lot of noise and took to much space. Currently I am building second CNC completely from steell.

Lessons learned

– stiffnes is much more important then accuracy;

– wood and alluminium are bad materials for CNC. Everything should be made from steell. I had to replace alluminium rails with steel to increase stiffness;

– noise is a problem. CNC is meant to work for several hours. I am thinking about noise isolated box for next design.

– more weight = less vibration = less noise. CNC should be heavy.