Hello All,

Finally took the dive, started on my CNC-router.

Just a bit of back-ground, I have zero experience in this. Do have a reasonable amount of common sense and I like to figure things out by myself, before asking people about it. Internet is a great source of information, and from there, I've read quite some things on what to do, what not, etc.

Straight away, I'm making the wrong start of course by not making drawings, plans and build accordingly.
Living in Thailand, ordering parts from overseas quickly add up to huge amounts of money. So I'll try to work with readily available materials, which means I have adjust plans on the fly if I find something that can be used. Luck would have it that I recently had a large batch of aluminium extrusions coming into our factory, so after carefully dismantling and sorting it, I can now start with a reasonable size machine.
Most of the machine will consist of second-hand/recycling parts and materials.

I am trying to build the machine on a very low budget, so not getting into HiWin rails and such yet.
Arduino and cheap controllers at first and trying to get it working first.
Primary use is wood, but if the stiffness of the machine allows, I might try cutting Aluminium in the future.


Basic cutting table has a size of 950mm x 1200mm.
Gantry clearance will be approximately 150mm.
Gantry for now planned 1200mm 80x80mm extrusion, but this can be made larger (vertical) by using 40x40 or 40x80 extrusions.
4x 1200mm SBR16 Linear Rails (fully supported) ordered and on the way. Was a very good deal I think at USD 100 per pair with 2 carriages for each rail.
Plan is to have 2x X-Axis motor, 1x Y, 1x Z.
Testing electronics will be done with NEMA 17's I have already, but for the router, I'm planning NEMA 23 for now unless I get advise to go bigger.


Basic frame has been put together, just to get a feel for the size.

I started with levelling the table on which the router will be build. Managed to get it to within 0.10 Degrees level.
Main Table stands on 6 levelling feet, wheels still attached but they're off the ground.
From there, side of the base frame is 80x40mm extrusions and the crossmember are 40x40mm.
There's 4 cross-members, but likely will add 3 more. Reasoning behind it is that initially, I might skip putting a bed (MDF or Aluminium) in there and use the cross-members to fix work-pieces.
I have the option to also put levelling feet under the router itself. Undecided as off yet.

On top of the base I've put two 80x80mm extrusions that act as a side-wall and will be used to fix the gantry-rails and the motor/motion parts. With rails and plates to fix the gantry to the carriages, I should come to about 160mm to the top of the cross-members, but with a wood or aluminium cutting bed on top of that, 150mm