[askman]

well, since finishing up my dyna kit and getting that operational, I've been running it and it has worked fairly well for me. (except wishing it was more rigid) as most of you know, my dyna adventure is posted on another therad. anyway, I've been thinking about building a linear rail type cnc router for a while when I ran across this machine.

Well, I guess they just started to produce it, and I have gotten lucky on a ebay offering they had, and got one for a great price. today, I received word that it is on its way to my house.

on the paper, this router has 22x24x4.5" travel. it comes with abba linear rail and ball screws on all 3 axis, 3-280oz steppers, 3-3amp drivers and 36v power supply. all ready to go for $2995 plus ship. touts .001" accuracy. shipping weight was 2- 110lb box or 220lb of aluminum structure and steel. No router mount included. shipping cost me 150 bucks from Arizona to Oregon. the spec looks really good for the money, and they also sell abba rails/blocks.

http://www.circuitspecialists.com/prod.itml/icOid/9171

it comes with table top (extruded) and looks to have good gantry clearance.


anyway, I will post picture and such when I receive it and give you a first impression. if it lives up to the ad, this will be one of the best bang for the money machine out there. and they took less than 1 week to ship. (they quote 1 week)

[askman]

well, it is here. it arrived in two plywood crate. one box was 110lb, the other was 100lb. the crates were well constructed, and it was well packed. I was fairly impressed. the total unit weight probably is only about 150 lb or so I would guess, as crate was fairly heavy. (and well padded in the box) anyway, one box had the base unit while second box had gantry with all the electronics. one interesting thing is that all the electronics are mounted on the back of the gantry.

all the linear rails were abba and bearing blocks have the grease fitting built in. at first glance, everything is well contructed and looks easy to put toghether. i will wait till the weekend to get it up and take pictures, but so far, I am very much impressed with the initial impression. the ball screws also looks very good. should be smooth running unit and very rigid.

[chcraft]

Any update on this yet? This looks like a very interesting machine. Any experience with their support at this point in time?

[askman]

Well, I hurt my back this weekend, and laid out. but, I have it mostly assembled.
there was two small issues that required me to partly disassemble and reassemble. not a big deal. I also have one small adjustment to make, except my back won't let me move at the moment. I expect small adjustment like this on all machine. it is solid machine, well engineered and very nice.

I also have K2, 2514 and dynacnc desktop (36x24) out of the three, cnc9000 is the best quality and value IMHO. it is very rigid (due to linear rails) and butter smooth. it is very high value setup. 2514's main complaint is lack of rigidity, and dyna is only slightly better (this is mainly due to using bearing rod instead of linear rail) dyna had issues that is discussed in another thread, so I won't get into it here.

I've been emailing with John rolfe, who is the manager of circuit specialist. he has been very helpful. I bought this machine on ebay where they wanted to see how much it would sell for (one shot experiment ifyou will) I got this for significantly lower price. Even with lower price paid, I can say the service so far has been supreme, and I've been treated as well as if I've paid full price. (in fact, certain other vendor from my recent experience can learn from this) They sent me two email (one when it shipped and one on the day it arrived) and answered couple of my email within 1 business day. in fact, they told me that the shipping cost was siginficantly higher than what I paid. I believe it, considering how well it was packed. I hope they are able to keep this level of service.

anyway, circuitspecialists have gotten me as permanent customer, that is for sure. So far, I've been really happy. I will try to get some pics later on.

[chcraft]

Thanks for the update. I called yesterday and spoke with Nolan and he was very helpful. I will probably order a machine today. The only other thing that I have found in that price range is the CarveWright and it seems to be relatively limited as to what you can do with it. What software are you planning to use to drive the machine.

I am probably going to buy Mach3. Have you used or do you know of anyone using EMC the Linux based control software?

Not sure what other software I will buy at this time. I am a rank amateur whan it comes to CNC though my son uses CNC routers in his job as a furniture maker and wood carver.

[askman]

I've been running mach3 on all my machines (I have 3 cnc router at the moment and couple mini mills) I use turbocad, but y ou can use just about any CAD program. really depends upon what you want to do with it. if you need to do 3d, I would go with something like millwizard, but for 2/2.5d stuff, any CAD capable of DXF/layer and mach3/lazycam combo is plenty good enough. of course, I also handcode as well.

only other alternative in this price range is k2 2514, which has smaller envelope and not as good IMHO.

[chcraft]

Thanks again for your prompt response. I have Turbocad Deluxe (not the pro version) installed on my system. I also have Adobe illustrator and Photoshop. Somewhere I also have a copy of AutoSketch from Autodesk so I should have at least a start.

I ordered my machine today and as soon as I can get in touch with Bob Campbell I will order Mach3. I also will look closely at Vcarve since my son will want to do some more artistic pieces that we can do the roughout with the router and he can finish by hand carving.

My personal expertise is in computer programming. Early in my career I wrote software for controlling tape and disk drives so I will probably jump into learning G code when I get a chance. My experience is programming is the same regardless of whether you are controlling a machine or painting data on a screen. The only difference is the language and its commands. Once you learn the subtleties of the language making the machine do what you want it to is easy.

I will get back to you when the machine arrives and will probably have a whole raft of questions. Especially about setting up Mach3.

[askman]

gcode is very simple. if you can do x/y coordinate, you can program. anyway, sounds great. I did change some of the setting form factory based on my experience and need. I am hoping to get upto 80-100IPM jog rather than 50 that they advertise. I think I will with my setup change.

[chcraft]

My CNC9000 was shipped on tuesday and is scheduled to be delivered on Monday. I need to download Mach3 and build a machine to run it. Would you be willing to share your setup for Mach3 so I have a starting point that would get me up and running more easily. My controller PC will be running Windows XP professional. I think it has a 1.4 or 1.6gHz processor and a 120GB hard drive. I need to get a monitor for it and will probably buy a 17" flat display for the office and use one of the 15" displays that I have for the controller. Have you had any experience using laptops as controllers?

[askman]

it is really straight forward. I did make one change on the stepper drive. it ships with driver set to 1/16 micro stepping. I change it to 1/4 micro stepping. using this, you lose bit of addressable resolution. (down to about 0.00025" instead of 0.000063" or so, which is plenty IMHO)

anyway, typical 3 axis mach setting with
axis step direction
x 2 3
y 4 5
z 6 7

and acceleration set to 3, speed set to 75 (that is what I am getting easily) and steps/inch to 4064. you may have to do some mechanical tuning, but overall not too bad. I may go to 1/2 step and see if I can move faster. (due to torque curve, lower the step, more torque you have per given jog speed)

[chcraft]

Thanks again for the info. Will let you know how it goes when the machine arrives.

[askman]

oh yes, I use laptop on my machines (older 1.2/1.4ghz machine with parallel port) works fine.

[Svelte]

I live within a 5 minute drive of Circuit Specialists. Several years ago they were a fine place to deal with. However, lately, they have really gone downhill. I saw their machine(s) before they ever put it on eBay. It is being built in a small dungeon in the back room of their building.
My main complaint with Circuit Specialists is that they are direct importers of electronic components. As such, they tend to sell the "electronics du jour". That is, what they are buying cheapest this month. They used to be in the computer business until they decided that there wasn't enough money in it. Their components changed almost weekly. I am sure that their CNC business will be the same.
I went in there looking for some shielded cable for my desktop CNC machine and the person behind the counter tried to sell me solid strand telephone wire. There are only about 2 people who know anything about CNC machines there. If one of them is not there, you are just out of luck.
The machine that they showed me was robust enough, but there is just no substance behind it. That is precisely why I actually spent the time and money to travel to several locations in the U.S. before I put down my hard-earned money on my large shop machine. I purchased a cheap desktop machine to learn on from an eBay seller and then had to, basically, rebuild it to make it function well. My large machine fired up right out of the crate.
Best of luck with your machines and I mean no disrespect to you guys. I just thought that you should know how this place looks from someone who lives nearby.

[chcraft]

My CNC9000 arrived late yesterday afternoon. The unit was very well packed and was in very good condition. After getting my hands crossed with the screws for the steppers and the gantry mount the machine went together smoothly. I like the rails and linear bearings. They seem to be very rigid. Everything moves very smoothly and easily. I have not done any checking yet to make sure that everything is square and the gantry is level to the table. It looks good but I need to check everything and make sure the screws are all snug. Not sure I like the parallel port breakout board but I can always replace that.

I am now studying the setup for Mach3 and trying to understand all of the options that are there. Would rather not break anything when I hook up the PC.

All in all I am pleased with the machine and feel it was good value for the money. At worst case I have what appears to be a good solid piece of hardware and if I need to replace the electronics I can do that.

[askman]

great that you got it and your experience seem to mirror mine in shipping quality and machine. with 80/20 setup, it is easy to tune/adjust.

in this price range, I don't think we can do much better. I realize this is not shopsaber or other industrial quality machine and not meant to compete there, but it uses quality component in ABBA rail and screws with 80/20 extrusion. even steppers and driver is fairly industry standard in this level of machine. everyone is pretty much direct importer nowadays or you can' compete. luckily, standard of quality has gone up I can honestly say it is much better than dyna cnc's desktop machine or k2 2514. (from personal experience) at similiar price. electronics are pretty solid IMHO. uses industrial standard IC set.

[chcraft]

I have setup Mach3 according to your suggestions and reset the dip switches on the controllers to 1/4 step. The Y and Z axis move when I use the jog function in Mach3. The X axis makes a high pitched sound for a fraction of a second and then nothing. It is probably too late to call Circuit Soecialists so I am wondering of you have any suggestions as to what to check. I have double checked the settings in Mach and they all look good to me.

Also the Y axis seems to be very stiff. Both X and Z move easily if I remove the stepper motors but the Y axis requires a lot of effort to rotate the ball screw. Any thoughts on where to look for problems there? The stepper moves it but when it does the sound it makes is not nearly as smooth as when the Z axis is moving.

[askman]

when it is powered up, the steppers should lock.



hmm, so y and z jogs ok, but x does not? on X axis, hmm, double check the acceleration and steps. also make sure all the coupling is not slipping. does x move at all before it makes a noise? double check the current and step setting. (make sure all the dip switchs are moved all the way) also try lower speed. (try 30ipm as starter)

for Y axis, make sure everything is lined up correctly. I had to center couple of the axis by loosening the rail at end of each travel and retighten, as well as center the ball screws. just bit of fine tuning should help on stickiness. (as well as lubing the slide using the grease port)

[chcraft]

I spoke with Noland at Circuit Specialists yesterday and he walked me through some additional troubleshooting steps and I was able to isolate the problem to a bad stepper driver. He was very helpful and when I had to break off and leave for an appointment he gave me his cell phone number to call so that we would not have to play telephone tag to get back together. They shipped me a new contoller yesterday afternoon and according to UPS tracking I will have it early next week.

He was also very helpful on adjusting the ball screw on the Y axis and with a bit more tuning I will have that smooth also.

The Mach software had several exercises on entering G-code and so far it it looks like learning G-code will be easy.

Thanks again for all the help and advice. I am learning a lot. Can't wait to start cutting on something.

[lovebugjunkie]

Askman and chcraft

Please let us know what you think of the cnc9000 after you have done a few projects on it. For what you get I have not been able to find a better deal on the internet and will most likely order one depending on your experience and thoughts. I still have a month or two before I pull the plug on a unit. At this time my interest is in using it for carving and would be using mach3 and Vcarve Pro4/photovcarve.

[askman]

I do think this is the best bang for the bucks router in the market. I've been happy with mine. there is no comparison between this and other machine in this price range. (which mostly use round linear bar)