[eisman]

I have been doing the DIY route for a few months now. I have made a plotter/engraver. I understand the electronics and such, but I haven't wound up with anything accurate enough that I ahve made out of wood, salvaged parts and wood.

I think I want to get a benchtop mill and a cnc conversion kit. I am trying to keep up on the new developments, but want to get some suggestions as to which one to go with. I will be milling PCBs, small items and perhaps parts for a shopbot type router.

Thank you for your time.
eisman

[eartaker]

If your looking for NOW and wanting something low cost Probotics makes a CNC router ready to go for about $1300 FireBall V90 CNC Router - I have used the Probotix electronics on my X2 mill and have had no issues at all.

[sansbury]

I built a pcb router and two benchtop mills (X1 and X2). The pcb router works but it's a pain to use. It takes an hour or more to make a decent size board, and it's finicky. Unless same day prototypes are really important for you, I think batchpcb is a much better bet as you get a properly fabbed board with soldermask and plated through holes which are much nicer to solder. And unless you make a ton of boards it will probably save you money.

If you insist though, I would start out with a Taig and be ready to make an adapter to hold a Proxxon rotary tool. The Taig spindle does 10k but that's still slow for pcb drills. It has the best accuracy out of the box though. For pcb work, every .001" can matter, especially with smt parts.