Hello,
I'll try to keep this short, but I'm bad at that:
First, my questions:
1. I've heard that some cheap aluminum CNC can mill steel using a very small depth and many passes. True or not?
2. What can I do? You might want to read next a little, probably the smaller paragraph.
I've been working on building a CNC mill since May 2013 and it's VERY far from completion.
I spent 5 months working basically full time except sleeps to design the machine on Autocad.
I tried to build it as I planned and bought 500Kg of steel bars (yeah, you read it well) and as many cheap tools as I needed and could afford.
I ended up giving up on cutting the steel bars with my jigsaw, I made a better job with my hand saw but it took forever, this is 1cm thick steel plate. I got a cheap angle grinder, I gave up on that soon because it was damn scary, I use it occasionally for other stuff. I ended up buying a plasma cutter in an auction. Very rough cuts, but good for most of my parts, who cares.
I then had to buy a vertical drill, cause it was nearly impossible to make straight holes by hand. And finally after wasting so much time making holes and threading them to bolt them,(I designed it all to be totally modular) I decided I couldn't waste any more time and bought a cheap welder and learnt to weld (still learning).
And my last decision was to leave the plates aside and try to work with hollow tubes, but it's not working out well for me.
I can't work fast, I can't make the holes straight enough because I can't clamp things properly, I can't weld any good and the pieces bent a lot, and I can't make straight cuts with the grinding wheel for some reason nor the exact length.
I have developed some sort of anxiety attacks and gone to the ER several times ever since I started designing this thing.
I really feel like I'm wasting my time and like I've had enough, but I don't want to quit just yet. I need to get this done. I wanted to make this myself to save some money and I'm spending a lot more I could have spent on a good router. I wanted to build a machine good enough to mill steel and with a long z axis, and I could have bought one like that with all the money i've spent by now counting the monthly fee I'm paying for storage.
So what can I do? For the moment I just want to work with rather thin samples of wood or alum, but eventually I'll want to be able to machine steel with rather thick profiles. If at least I could know for sure that those cheap alum routers can mill steel, I could start working on my production and then try to machine the parts for my diy CNC. But I'm not sure what to do. I don't need more mistakes nor wastes of time. What should I do? 1. Get a cheap CNC router (but I need to be able to cut the steel parts for my diy mill with it) 2. Get a better CNC mill (not over 10k. I'd rather not do this for I might not be able to make it through the year) 3. prevail... (but the end of the tunnel is out of sight)
Thank you