Hi guys,
I’m following this forum silently for a long time but I registered few days ago.
Let me explain few my reasons:
I’m IT consultant for last 20 years and that is what I do for living. However, I’m also hobbyist for many many years, doing various crafts. Seems like my interests are combined in weird way: electronics and high IT stuff at one side and ancient crafts like watchmaking at the other side. Hence, 20+ years ago I’ve been watchmaker’s apprentice for some time but life took me on other side. Now, I have a time and resources to get back to my “first love” – watchmaking.
So I’m doing it for last 5 years at purely hobby level, but dived pretty deep into… Now we come to the point.
Three years ago I started my build of DIY CNC router. Idea was to have a small device, fixed gantry type, approx. table dimensions about 40x40 cm, height of upsides to bridge about 550 mm (Yes pretty high). It had to be made of double layer 6mm thick steel plates (so total 12 mm per side) made with laser cut, very well fixed with some slot fixtures and screws. I will take some pictures during the day and post them here. In the meantime, I found some old CAD drawing for laser cutting so I’m posting image of one side plate just to get idea…
In lack of info, not enough reading and wrong estimations, I designed it with round shafts and linear bearings, so x and y axis with 16 mm shafts and z axis with 12 mm…
Hence, now I’m having more and more demands to accomplish some job like making new part of custom engraving, so I definitely need sort of CNC router or mill… I have small lathe to accomplish some turnings, but I need milling from time to time too.. Mill would be overkill option according to my demands, so router is ideal for now.
Since it needs to be small and I need to produce small parts, ideal table dimensions are not more than 20x30 cm, with height travel about 50-70 mm max.
I need to mill mostly light materials for modeling, but also need to work with copper/brass/bronze and sometimes to make small parts of thin steel plates , like 0.4 to 0.8 mm thick.
Therefore it needs to be sturdy and rigid.
I saw one my “colleague” took Chinese 3040T 4-axis with 24,000 RPM spindle and he says he is super satisfied, milled metal plates and similar with no trouble )will post link here later). I read many pages about that machine here but it doesn’t looks like appropriate to me.
My doubt is:
1. Buy 3040 or 2030 hardware kit and improve it with Gecko, proper Nema23 motors and appropriate spindle
or
2. Continue my work on rigid frame I still have in my cellar?
I intend to finish this frame with proper base, adjust design to use linear supported rails (beams or slotted, like Hiwin ?), use ballscrews 1605 for all axis, Nema 23 motors and some spindle. Worktable is made of 2 layers of Aluminium, 6 mm each, so 12mm total thickness, dimensions about 40x40 cm.
What do you think about it at all? I have spent some time and bucks on frame, I think I can improve it to be pretty useful, compared to 3040 hardware kit made of aluminum extrusion.
1. Should I use supported rails or slotted one? Is 20 or 25 mm enough for x and y axis? If slotted, which dimension is fine?
2. What size for z axis? How much travel would be enough?
3. Ballscrew 1605 is good enough?
4. Motors?
5. Spindle, really pain… Some says 800 W is enough, some 1.5 kW… AC or DC? Water or air cooled? I’m pretty confused. Please bear in mind that ER11 collet is enough for all my work, time is not an issue in a means of speed… So, must focus on precision.
Any input highly appreciated. Sorry for long post. Will add some pictures tonight.