[warranator]

I have been deciding on two routers for about 2 months now, first one was the Zenbot and the second was the CNC 3d router off ebay made in China. See link below.

24" x 16" 3D cnc router engraving machines (eBay item 160503425881 end time 13-Nov-10 05:50:35 AEDST) : Business Industrial


After lots of deliberation I decided to take a chance with the machine from China. My reasons for this was it is bigger than the Zenbot of similar price, it is made from alloy and it has ball screws. The Zenbot has slightly bigger stepper motors and is made in USA which I think is a biggie. Don't get me wrong, I think the Zenbot from what I have seen on the net is a good machine but it was only slightly edged out by the full alloy machine, maybe time will tell whether I should have bought the Zenbot.

Anyway I have only unpacked the machine and I will update this post as I get to different stages. What I can say for now is, postage to Australia was less than 7 days, the packaging was very good, the machine looks exactly like the one in the picture. So far I am very happy with the quality of the build.

[o1dakota440]

please keep us posted on this machine. i just bought the 17x15 from the same seller, but it is being held in customes because the shipper under declared the value. but when i do get it i will update with a review.

[Gliderask21]

I have looked at these several times but after reading the thread below:

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/diy-cn...nc_router.html

I thought I would hang on, I would be very interested in your experiences and to see if some of the issues have been resolved.

Good luck and keep us posted

[0miker0]

Isn't the Zenbot only $300 or $500 minus the controller and power supply? The one you got off Ebay costs a lot more. I'll probably be getting a Zenbot soon unless something better is out there in the $500 range. I do like the idea of a full aluminum machine.

[o1dakota440]

ok i got mine all set up and running, and the only thing i needed to fix was the mount for the rotozip. it was canted a little bit, but after i got it plumb everything works great. i will try to post some pics of my first projects with it.
my over all opinion is that it is a great little machine for the money.

[o1dakota440]

here is a pic of my very first cnc project, one my very first cnc machine. it is an engraving of my wife, i should have used a better piece of wood.(there is a knot in her nose and on her lower cheek.) and i really need a better camera.
and just a FYI remember to tighten all the nuts, bolts, and screws that are on this machine, and use locktight. i had to tighten a few that came loose while cutting this piece. but i do like the machine, and can't at this time say a bad thing about it.

[Tweakie]

o1dakota440,

Brilliant work. How long did it take you to complete ?

Tweakie.

[o1dakota440]

it took about 3 hours to cut, but i had to stop every couple minuts to tighten up some bolts on the machine. so today i am going to take all of the screws/bolts out and use locktight and lock washers on them. then i will cut another piece and see how much i can increase the speed/feed without losing details.

[Tweakie]

I bet that would have been a sight to watch

Don't worry about speed too much it's the quality that really counts, some of my stuff has taken 8 hours.

This little chap took my machine 3 hours to complete.

Tweakie.

[warranator]

Have not juiced up the machine yet, time poor due to work. I have however assembled the machine and modified a couple of things. The plate holding the Z axis was a bit cock eyed so I made a new bracket out of solid aluminium. The mounting for the dremel was also cock eyed so I welded the holes closed and re drilled them in line and prettied the whole mount up on the hand mill. I have replaced a lot of the crappy philips head screws with cap heads also.
I should get time to fire it up this weekend and it will be interesting to see how the motors and drivers perform
With regards to the zenbot, the same size or similar sized machine with everything to run is more expensive than the ebay machine by about $300-$400

[Gliderask21]

any more news on this machine??

[warranator]

I finally got around to firing the machine up this weekend. I had a problem with all the axis losing steps after about 30 lines of code, turns out it was a setting in mach3 in ports and pins, I had the software running at 100khz which was the sellers recommendation but after I changed it to 35000hz the machine works great. Repeatability is within 0.02mm on the z axis and about 0.03mm on the x and y axis which I think is pretty good. I have also had the same problem as others with screws been lose which is not a huge issue, the dome nuts on the end of the ball screws were pretty crap so I changed them over for lock nuts, not as pretty but more functional.
Something that I did not pick up originally is the router motor is not a Bosch but instead a genuine Bocsh , not a big deal but I thought I would mention it as I missed it and it does say in his ad that it is a Bocsh so there is no misleading there. I am happy with the router motor at the moment anyway and would still of bought the machine if I had read it correctly. I plan to buy a water cooled motor in the near future anyway. I did some text as a first attempt at making something, it is not bad but it did get better once I had tightened the x axis rail bearings up.
I then moved on to making some circles with a 3mm end mill and I was very happy with their roundness and tolerance, all were within 0.05mm.
My next project was to do a lithogragh, I bought a program off ebay for $35 and used that which was very basic and doesn't really give you any adjustment in the program, I was pretty happy with the performance of the machine as I set the picture to machine from corner to corner which meant it was using all 3 axis at once and for the whole job which took about 1 hour to complete (all pictures attached), another factor is the piece of timber I used is chipboard.


Overall at the moment I would give this machine an 8 out of 10. I am minusing 2 because of small things mentioned in my review that I found to be wrong or poorly designed. I think for the price these little problems should be accepted and sorted out after you received the machine, the problems could all be sorted out in an average garage and in saying this I still think the machine would have worked anyway the way it was.
I will post some more carvings as I do them and also post how reliable it has been.

If anyone has any questions don't hesitate to ask.

[Tweakie]

warranator,

Great report - I think you are going to have a lot of fun with that machine.

Tweakie.

Interesting about the Bocsh.

[o1dakota440]

ok, so i was trying to do another carving and the bosch rotozip blew up. i'm not real happy about this, and have contacted the seller with no response so far. i will post updates.

[warranator]

That is unfortunate that the roto blew up. Just be aware that they are not a Bosch but rather a Bocsh, so in other words a cheap knock off which in all fairness to the seller cscs219 has stated in his ebay add that it is a Bocsh. Like I have commented before I think you are better off getting rid of the roto it comes with and buy a water cooled spindle which is so much quieter anyway.
I also noticed someone complaining that the machine has a piece of metallic plastic behind the Y axis ball screw and rails, this is true but has no negative affect on the machine what so ever, in fact it makes the machine look great and it gives you a great view of the ball screw etc in the reflection.

In my opinion after having bought the machine from cscs219 after a couple of months I still think it is worth the money. I will however comment on here if my views change.
If anybody has any negative opinion about this machine please feel free to post some comments, this review is here to help everybody out.
Will post some pics of some projects I have done and machine set up soon.

[Tweakie]

A quiet spindle is definitely the way to go. Some of my jobs run 8 hours and I could not live with the noise of a standard router.
It's a little cheaper than the water cooled but I use an air cooled 3 Phase motor driven from a VFD and it is virtually silent. It was money well spent.

Tweakie.

[Gliderask21]

Thanks for the update Warranator, keep it coming I'm still trying to decide.

Tweakie, which spindle are you using??

Cheers fellas
Steve

[Tweakie]

Tweakie, which spindle are you using??

Sorry, cant remember the make (the label is hidden behind the outer jacket) but it was made in Germany and was originally fitted with a planetary reduction gearbox and electromagnetic shaft brake.

Tweakie.

[RomanLini]

Bunnings sell an Ozito 850w router that is identical to your "Bocsh", I have one on my router. Currently it has performed well and only cost about $60.

I mentioned it as it will bolt straight into your machine and get you running quickly. Not because it's a great router choice, however the Bunnings Ozito brand has a 3-year warranty that Bunnings WILL honour, on the spot with a new router if need be.

[dertsap]

My next project was to do a lithogragh, I bought a program off ebay for $35 and used that which was very basic and doesn't really give you any adjustment in the program,.

I'm curious as to what adjustment problem that you had because I can help you with any problems if the software that you bought is microcarve . I'm the only guy on ebay selling a $35 software so chances are that you bought my software .