Hello all! Long time lurker, first time poster. Today I picked up the guts of someone elses's cnc project, and I'm looking for a few pointers from the experienced builders. The person I bought this from was planning to build a machine out of it, but didn't get the time. I don't know the history before that. I believe it's part of someone's DIY build. Everything is put together nicely.

What I've got is a machine that looks like it is designed to operate like a knee mill, the X/Y axis would ride on the Z with a fixed head. I don't have a column or a head that came with this. Building a large column seems like it would be a bit inefficient compared to disconnecting the table from the Z and mounting a spindle to the Z axis like a traditional VMC. Open to suggestions here??

What I have is not super strong, but it seems like robust enough that I should be able to mill aluminum. The entire frame is made from aluminum. Parts list is:

Nema 24 on X/Y axis with 7/16" ball screws - Sanyo Denki 103H7823-1740 stepper
Nema 34 on Z with lead screw - Sanyo Denki SM2862-5255 stepper
15mm rails on X/Y
20mm rails on Z

I'm not sure what size spindle would be a good match for these rails/steppers. My mill is BT30, having shared tool holders would be awesome, but that just seems way to big for this little machine.

For a control system, I'm thinking Raspberry Pi with LinuxCNC. Mesa for the breakout/control boards?


This is all new to me. I wanted to build a little machine like this to learn the ins and outs of doing it. And if I can make aluminum parts along the way, that would be great. In the future, when I have more space, I would like to get a fullsize VMC to retrofit, so I thought learning some of what to do and what not to do on a little machine would be smart.

Thanks for any and all input!