advice on building a cnc machine

[Harry Cleary]

Phill Fenton has a thread on one he has just built. Looks the business. Do a search.

[Martin Pearson]

Kind of difficult to answer questions but will give it a try.

take long to make?
How long’s a piece of string? Depends how quick you can work & how much free time you have.

is it reliable?
How good is your cutting & sticking things together.

does it last?
Does anything really last these day’s

are self builds as good as the ready made machines?
Generally probably not but some will be better than some of the ready made junk you see being sold.

Phillip, it really comes down to what you want the machine to do, how accurate you want it to be & how much money you are prepared to spend on the components.

Phill Fenton built a 4′ x 2′ machine for somewhere between £600 – £900 and has been very happy with it’s performance so far. It’s not used on a daily basis & has only been used to cut a few different substrates but it has more than paid for itself already & Phill is confident if he needs it for a job it will cope without problem.

[Phill Fenton]

I spent about two months building mine. You can read all about it in my blog on signapp or in the tutorial section of this site.

It is very precise and does produce useable work. Being home built it doesn’t have the reliabilty of a production machine, but having built it yourself you will have all the knowledge you need to maintain and fix it.

Of course it will never be as good as a fully sorted production machine costing thousands of pounds, but for a few hundred pounds (I spent six hundred building mine) you can produce a fully functioning machine that works.

Highly recomended, but not for the faint hearted, and definately a very satisfying new hobby.

If you simply want a machine that is fast and reliable to use as a workhorse to base a business around, and aren’t interested in learning something new or getting your hands dirty, best to buy from a manufacturer.

[HenriMonnier]

quote Phillip Patterson:

take long to make?
is it reliable?
does it last?
are self builds as good as the ready made machines?

Phillip,
‘Time’ – I spent a full month putting it together.
‘Reliable’ – I’ve got 200 hours or so on it, nothing has ‘gone south’ yet.
‘Last’ – I believe it will. I have several friends that have machines constructed with similar materials, and they are also going ‘strong’.
‘As Good’ – A lot of that is going to depend upon the materials used in the build, and also your care during the build.

Start with a very stable base, and a sturdy table for your spoilboards, etc.
I’ll be glad to share my build info, Bill of materials, etc. if you are interested.

Henri

[David Rowland]

Time – well it takes minutes to get stuck into communities and come up with something that might be affordable. But when you get it you got to find the time to build it and get it working and hope it is what u want.

Reliable – Big industrial machines fail! i should know so.

Last – Generally if the machine is "solid" then you will have a longer lasting machine.

this is a whole topic… Phill has built something for small jobs, but for large scale stuff it will not cope.

[Martin Pearson]

Dave your right Phill has built a machine to handle smaller jobs & it does that very well from what Phill has said, if your wanting to get in to full scale cnc production then obviously it won’t cope but Phill knew that before he started.
It copes with the sort of work he does as a small signmaking company & allows him to produce inhouse work he would have had to buy in from a trade supplier previously.
Sure Phill will be well aware of i’s limitations by now & he will know before he quotes on a job if he will be able to use his own machine or will have to use a trade supplier.
It’s also allowed him to do some work that he wouldn’t have looked at doing before like the work he did for his Daughters business.

[Stephen Morriss]

I built mine but I used Alu extruded section and machines all the ends square. and the gantry travels on ground steel rails with linear bearings.
Mine will be a little more stable than Phills but it also cost more and is a bit smaller at 760 X 620 usable travel.

I can’t remember how long it took but I did it all in a month.

Reliable, on the whole but I get the occasional mishap.

Will it last, I hope so but being a one off means that you get to make the mistakes that get avoided in the second or third one.

Some self builds will be better than a ready made machine but they tend to be built by experienced engineers and it’ll be their second or third machine.

You’ll spend less money but more time, you’ll make mistakes, think of better ways to make parts + a whole list of other stuff.
Big name routers will also have options like tool changers and auto tool height and even electronic eyes to line up pre printed materials so it all depends on what you’ll be using the machine for and how much work you’ll have for it.

Steve

[Steve Hooper]

I spent a little over £2K buying mine from Germany. No hassle. My background is engineering (mechanical, electronics and software) but building a CNC myself wouldn’t have contributed to my mortgage payments.
🙂

[Phill Fenton]

Just a quick update based on ongoing experience with my machine:-

When first built it was prone to breaking down. However, over time I have been able to identify problem areas and gradually introduce improvements which has increased the machines reliability. This coupled with experience and learning to use the machine effectively, helps to make it more reliable and efficient.

As Dave indicated earlier, even a fully sorted production machine can have problems. This is likely to be caused as much by inexperience on behalf of the operator as much as defects in the machine itself.

If you’re going to build your own machine I strongly recommend you build a design that has a track record behind it rather than try to design your own completely from scratch. Learn from the mistakes of others and capitalise on their experience and know how.

The following forum is a great resource for anyone interested in building a CNC machine:-

http://www.buildyourtools.com/phpBB3/

[Steve Hooper]

Useful site, Phil. 🙂