[10bulls]

Welcome to my first router/mill/cnc project.

With 2 young kids and busy job, build progress is not going to be meteoric. By the time the dragonlets are abed, kitchen tidied, dog walked etc, I'm doing good if I can get into the garage by 10pm (sleep deprivation permitting). I see by other posts I'm not alone in this. What is this 30ish post baby bloke thing?..."Urrrh tired...urrrgh...must...make...CNC macheeen!"

I've recently acquired a 7x12 mini lathe that I'm trying to get to grips with but my turning ability is currently only marginally better than my welding (which looks like something a bronchial volcano might spit out).

I've decided to go for an aluminium build; mainly because I'm sick of the sight of MDF after using it in a number of household projects. I still disturb the occasional drift of MDF dust when exploring the darker depths of my garage. MDF also == painting (me no likey).

So without further ado, here is a rather amateurish CAD drawing of my design
(complete with magical floating motors!)

The slides rails are from old printers, the aluminium is from some rather chunky extrusions I blagged from a local business. The Y carriage is initially going to use a pair of bushings from the printers and the X is going to use a rather shonky design I came up with using blocks with 2 pairs of roller bearings that run on the rails on their chamfered rims. A prototype I made of this tells me it should work but my rails are going to end up badly grooved and zoner Splint also points out the excessive thrust load on the bearing. I'm going to build the Y axis and gantry first so I may change my mind when I get to the X.

(I do hope I've got my X and Y nomenclature the right way round...I'd hate to come across as a dumb newbie...even if I am

(the zip file contains a dxf)

Regards Andy