[snowgrains]

Well, I've lurked here for a long time, so I suppose it's time to publish my build thread.

For background, I've already built one machine from plans. I bought the "MiniMill" plans on eBay that Mike Walach sells and actually completed it almost two years ago. Uses the Xylotex 3-axis controller and the 269 oz. motors. Bought a license for Mach 3 about a year ago and finally learned enough to make my first cut last November.

I'm an IT person, not a machinist, if that helps explain what took me so long to get going. This stuff can be a bit obtuse, and I'm probably a bit dense, so it's tough to build inertia.

That first cut was pretty exciting. I'd finally transitioned from theory to reality. Pictures of the MiniMill and a few things I've cut are below.

The piece with the red letters is Cyrillic for my daughter's name, "Yulia." My wife and I traveled to Kazakhstan for 2 months in Dec-2004 through Jan-2005 to adopt her at the age of 7. She spoke only Russian and we spoke only English. She was totally fluent within 6 months of coming to the United States and now is an all-American girl. I want to keep her vested in her heritage, so I'll probably be making a few things on the CNC mill that call back to her Russian beginnings.

Before I'd even finished the MiniMill, I realized that it was going to be lacking in size and speed. I figured I'd finish it and use it as a training ground while I scoped out a larger and faster machine.

I bought the Solsylva plans and Hack's 8020 plans (back when he was selling them).

Solsyva's plans were incredibly thorough, but I was worried about how much tuning would be involved with all that gas pipe and roller bearings.

Hack's plans looked much easier to build and I hadn't done enough research to worry about the 8020 bearings. I know he later made the plans free and stopped selling the MDF kits. I think I bought the last kit he had available in April-2007.

Now, with the holidays over and a Chicago winter burying me periodically with snow, it seems like a good time to get going on Hack's design.

I spent a lot of time reading the forums and saw more than a few posts warning that the 8020 bearings were not a good choice. I also saw that automation-overstock.com had Hiwin linear motion for reasonable prices. Finally, I noted that Ahren was marketing his aluminum carriages for use on 1/4" thick cold-rolled steel.

What I have so far is Ahren's carriages on the 49" long X-axis and Hiwin 25 mm rails and bearings for the 34.5" long Y-axis. Pictures are below.

I'm thinking of using the same 269 oz. motors with 1/2-8, 2-start Acme and dumpstercnc anti-backlash nuts.

Anyway, I wanted to contribute something back to this great community. I've learned a lot over the past couple years thanks to the many wonderful people who post here.

Any thoughts, advice, comments, etc. are greatly appreciated.

Greg