[pamcinto]

I decided I would put together a thread detailing my DIY CNC Router build. I chose to build up the KRMx02 to handle a half sheet therefore the 50" x 50" size.

I had a tough time narrowing it down to either the CRP4848 or the KRMx02 machine designs. I liked the idea of the more DIY approach to the Kronos machine as I am a tinkerer at heart and feel I will know the machine better by putting in more hours on the build.

First step, Buy the plans:

I was originally going to just buy the build book for the KRMx02, but apparently, Kronos only offers the full package for purchase and shipping to us Canucks. This means you have to buy the build book, the upgrade book AND the templates kit bundled. Of course shipping to Canada from the states is a license for the shippers to print money. Add on top of this the duty and GST charge at the border.

Plans I was hoping would cost me $80 +$20 shipping wound up being $300 when all was said and done. Hopefully the rest of the purchases don't wind up with the same sort of 300% Canada tax.

I'm not blaming Michael Simpson from Kronos for this, as he is doing what most US suppliers are doing. Some rare suppliers in the US have put in some groundwork to stream-line the buying experience for Canadians making ordering easy/straight forward as well as choosing shippers/shipment methods that minimize the impacts on us when the customs boys come out to play. I doubt Michael has enough Canadian purchases to worry too much about this though.

I would suggest however that the quality of materials (esp. @ $300 outlay!) could be improved. The books are greyscale prints on basic paper. There are full color pictures included in the CDs that accompany, but I doubt I'm going to appreciate having to pull out the computer in my garage to get a better image to clarify the step I'm working on. For sure, this book will be bent/torn/greased and ready to be trashed by the time I'm through the build. What if I want to build a second one? I guess I'll be documenting the build with many photos.

I am now going through the process of finding local (even Canada wide) suppliers for what I need to buy. I started by taking the BOM Kronos has provided and re-organizing. The BOM is organized by step. This makes it very difficult to purchase unless you want to have many orders. I put in a number of hours to organize by material type and supplier type so that I could send out for quotes. For example, there is no total number of 5/8" x 2" hex bolts to buy. You have to sum it all up on your own. Group all the fastners together to make a legible list to send off to the supplier to quote on. I'm guessing pretty much everyone has to go through this excersize. Once I am done, I will post the newly organized list for the 50 x 50 machine on Kronos forums so others may be able to save some time.

I will post again when I've made some tangible progress.

[harryn]

You are right, that Americans tend to think business practices that we see here are the same everywhere, especially when it comes to Canada. Growing up, we used to routinely go to Canada, since it was not far away, and only required my Dad to show his drivers license to cross the border with a car full of family.

Perhaps romantically, I still think of Canada as "my Uncle's house". Of course you should knock on the door, but you already know you will be welcome to come in and have lunch and chat. I was really shocked the last time I flew there, as it was more complicated to cross the border back and forth to Vancouver BC than going to Germany.

Coming back to the business / parts accumulation side, make sure to look carefully at the price of industrial rails vs cold rolled steel rail setups, because it might not cost that much different by the time you are done paying the freight and tax, and the performance / fickle factor can be quite different.

[pamcinto]

harryn,

Can you expand on what you mean by industrial rails vs cold rolled steel rail setups? What are these industrial rails? Are you talking about linear motion packaged type setups?

Thanks for the comments. I have got my BOM quoted out in multiples now and am pretty close to ready to get the orders in. I'm intrigued by this topic you've mentioned.

[pamcinto]

So I figured that the tool I need that I don't have yet is a drill press. I've found what seems to be a decent quality variable speed unit used in a little town Close to here. I'll be picking it up at the end of the week. I also determined that the laser cross-hairs is a good thing to have escpecially when you've got this many holes to drill. After a little forum crawling, I found what looks to be a good solution:

Buy WoodRiver Universal Drill Press Laser Attachment at Woodcraft

My first step for the machine now is to make a stand as it should help make the build out easier. I've decided to go along with the basic idea of Micheals stand @ Kronos:
http://www.kronosrobotics.com/krmx02...02%20Stand.pdf

I don't like the fact that the entire volume under the stand is rendered useless with the support features so I've got a modification that I plan on doing to make a shelf or two underneath. I will take more lumber and steel strut material than the kronos design, but I've got too small a shop to waste space like this.

With any luck, I can get my channel strut material this week (supplier is closed outside of normal M-F business hours). Then I can get building this weekend!

[cd_edwards]

I don't think I'd bother with the laser unless you need it for doing some woodwork. You'd be better off getting a automatic center punch for lining up the holes for the drill press.. without a punched hole, your drill bit will wander around until it manages to remove some material. Unfortunately that place might not be where you want if just using the laser..

[PaulRowntree]

ditto on the centre punch, and add a centre drill

[pamcinto]

Thanks on the centre punch idea Paul and Colten. I've got a punch for marking all the holes first. I'm also planning pre-drilling each with a small bit (assume that's what you mean by centre drill). I also do some woodworking so the laser will be very useful in that scenario I believe.

I'm picking up my used floor standing drill press this afternoon from a guy just outside of town. I'm going to build a table for it this weekend using this page as inspiration:

Drill Press Table plans - Woodworking Talk - Woodworkers Forum

I'm also going to get my stand started, I'm picking up my hardware order and channel strut material this afternoon for that.

Thanks again for the tips guys. Sh*t's starting to get moving. It's nice to have done most of the pre-planning and get constructing.

Cheers

[pamcinto]

I guess that post went in after all. Newbie mistake.
This was a duplicate post

[PaulRowntree]

... I'm also planning pre-drilling each with a small bit (assume that's what you mean by centre drill).

A centre-drill is a stout little drill, usually with two chamfers on each end. Mine are~1/8", 1/4" diameter but most of the shank is at 1/4" so it won't bend. It will make better starting cones than a small drill bit.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=centr...ient=firefox-a

Good to hear that it is a proper floor standing press. I bought a table top one from CanTire, and IMHO it has too much flex for metal work.
Cheers!

[cd_edwards]

Personally I wouldn't pre-drill your holes in steel with a small bit. Just use some WD-40 for lube and go for it with the size of hole you need. Probably 5/16" if I'm not mistaken.

[SixOfOne]

I have had the same problems with using a small bit as a pilot, they tend to walk. So I bought a spring loaded punch, give it 2 clicks and just dive in with the larger bit. less bit changing in the press also so its quicker.

[pamcinto]

I got my new drill press on the weekend. Instead of putting together a table for it, I decided to go with the one that Lee Valley tools has. It's pretty great and only a few dollars more than I was budgeting for materials for my plans.
Drill-Press Table & Fence - Lee Valley Tools

Here's the press, hopefully it will work out well.

Attachment 181764

[cornbinder23]

I absolutely LOVE the Lee Valley store.
I get to stop by one every once in a while when I am in B.C.
Actually just got a new Veritas flush cut pull saw for my birthday.
Cant wait to go back... soon

JTCUSTOMS

[harryn]

harryn,

Can you expand on what you mean by industrial rails vs cold rolled steel rail setups? What are these industrial rails? Are you talking about linear motion packaged type setups?

Thanks for the comments. I have got my BOM quoted out in multiples now and am pretty close to ready to get the orders in. I'm intrigued by this topic you've mentioned.

Hi, sorry for the delayed response, I have been on the road with mixed / even slower than usual internet access. Consider to look into the hiwin rails from automation4less. Even fairly small ones have quite high ratings.

[baniels]

Going with something like that would be a distinct deviation from the plans, no? I'm a little too green to start going off the reservation.

My rails are 4 x 0.25 flat stock, 1018 cold rolled. If I am going to stick to the plans, is there an alternative to simply buying flat stock and cutting it to length?

(your PM box was full, so I couldn't reply there)

Pamcinto, I'm not trying to hijack your thread... Just had the same question as you.

Hi, sorry for the delayed response, I have been on the road with mixed / even slower than usual internet access. Consider to look into the hiwin rails from automation4less. Even fairly small ones have quite high ratings.

[harryn]

I guess it depends on how closely you like to follow kits and plans ( sort of like building a model airplane ) , vs using the plan ideas as a starting point for the build in general. I have purchased some plans because I think they contained some very good ideas and construction approaches, but I don't follow them. It just depends on your goals and tolerance for things "not quite working / rework ".

[pamcinto]

So to get away from the sideline of what constitutes a deviation from a plan, I've got through about half of the stand so far this weekend. I've been using the plans on the kronos site for the steel stand. I've never used the channel strut material before and it is a lot like erector set for grown ups. Lots of fun! I decided to make the wooden end pieces out of MDF rather than Baltic birch as I believe it's almost as good and less than half the price. Rona here can tint any colour on their metal paints so I got to chose my colours without having to stay with the standard rustoleum primary colours. I started by painting the MDF sheets.

I used my new (to me) drill press and made the through holes with a relatively cheap spade bit. For a guy that's not used to a drill press, it's pretty sweet how clean and straight a hole you get with respect to a hand drill.
I've barely started the machine build and I'm already very happy with my decision to build a CNC router!
I'll be picking away at painting through my evenings this week.

[harryn]

It does feel great to make progress on a build. Congrats. MDF is about 25 - 30% of the strength of normal plywood and baltic birch is even better. Nonetheless, I understand your reasoning, especially since there might end up being "edits". It might make sense to consider using chip board rather than MDF, as it is also low cost, but much stronger than MDF.

It is nice to use a product that is flat and straight like these engineered wood products. I ended up using hardwood veneered plywood to achieve a similar effect, but it is US$ 50 / sheet, and it does add up fast.

I like your drill press table. I wonder if it will fit on my much shorter / table top press ? I will look into that.

[pamcinto]

harryn,

I think the damping characteristics of the mdf are more important than the strength of the material for this particular part of the stand. The mdf should mitigate any standing waves that might otherwise setup throwing accuracy off. The only place the strength comes into effect is that this member will provide some cross-bracing to make sure the stand doesn't turn into a parallelogram.

The drill press table is great. I've used it a little bit now and I still think it's good value for the money. I really appreciated the vacuum pass-through in the fence. It inhaled all the mdf dust from drilling so I didn't have to!

[pamcinto]

A little bit of a slow week on the router, spent a bunch of time with the kids though! We had our first nice weather week here in Cowtown so we had to make the best of it.

I did get the ends of the steel stand built this week. I used painted MDF (Floor paint from RONA, supposed to take more abuse). I can't say that I spent too much time making sure the paint job was great/stroke free, as I imagine it will be taking a bit of a **** kicking once I get the thing running in the shop anyways!

I wound up short a few 1/2' X 1.5" bolts, so I ran to the home depot to top up. Bolt supply depot sells them at $0.26/piece, Home depot has them for $1.09!! Thank goodness I didn't head there for my major purchase or the $250 would have been $1000 with this kind of markup! The other interesting price difference I found (while on the subject) was the channel strut material. Acklands Grainger had the stuff for $20/ft. Calgary Tubing Supply (CTS Industries) had the best price I found at just under $2/ft. Just goes to show that you can't just run out and buy this stuff without checking around. Not that any of you seasoned veterans would have done that, but for me who hasn't spent much time in this type of endeavour, phone/email shopping around has paid off in spades.

Here's some pics of my stand side panels (so exciting I know).