So you've spent hours, days even in CAD crafting your amazing new part or design. Now you have to cut it and doing it by hand is not an option so it's time to get it CNC cut. The realm of precisely cutting your design using a CNC machine has been designated to big budgets, large shops and expensive machines that required an apprenticeship and college diploma before even beginning to think about running it.
If you are like me you've dreamed of being able to do this but don't have the experience or money to essentially dive into what could be a new carrier, let alone the space for the typical CNC machine. Well thanks to a new revolution of DIY CNC tabletop machines you can now begin to prototype those parts you've always wanted to cut.
What you'll find is a growing community of people tinkering in their garages and basements and innovating on a daily basis. It's a throw back to the early days of personal computing of the mid to late 1970's. Amateur computer enthusiasts building the systems they wanted and starting a whole new industry called personal computing. Those personal computers would become available in store by the early to mid 1980's and much like those times I hope to see personal CNC machines and 3D printers available en mass in the next ten to fifteen years on the store shelf. Hopefully sooner. The stage we are at right now; we are still in the early cottage industry phase of people producing kits and parts for people to assemble their own machine, but there are no cheap readily available off the shelf desktop size machines on the market. With every machine built and every innovation discovered we will get closer to the off the shelf sub $1000 machine available in store along side the variety of printers and scanners and fax machines.
If you are like me, you can't wait and are determined to build your own and be a part of this growing community of basement hackers and genius makers.
In the next coming articles you'll see my machine from beginning to end along with the problems, solutions and progress as I build my very own tabletop CNC machine.
The goal is to build a machine to fit on my workbench in roughly a 3x3' footprint and cut parts using a spindle or hand held rotary tool and to be under $1000 Canadian. Additionally I would like to add a 3D print head to have both subtractive and additive methods of prototyping.
To start, I've decided to go with a build found on http://www.instructables.com/
(http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-a-Three-Axis-CNC-Machine-Cheaply-and-/) The user oomlout has graciously posted an amazing step by step article along with a full assembly manual, diagrams, schematics and cut diagrams in various formats, even one to be printed on 8.5x11 paper for cut templates.
To start off lets go with the easy part. The free stuff. If you look hard enough you should be able to find something similar, scrounge, trade, call in those favors and you should be able to cut some costs.
1) The Computer.
For this I have a surplus Dell Pentium 4 computer from my office. There had been a half dozen broken machines dating back to Pentium 100's up in the attic and I happened to be in the right place at the right time when the big boss said go take it and make it all disappear. We need the space. So I pieced together bits and parts and built a working system. Three actually. Two of which needed new capacitors soldered to the motherboard. Less than $5 in repairs. Perfect score!
Cost: $5
2) The Software.
www.linuxcnc.org
This is a custom version of Ubuntu Linux designed for the hobby CNC culture. Albeit a bit dated version wise, it is still able to be updated and I've had no compatibility problems with the various versions so far. It is prepackaged with EMC2, a powerful program for cutting your parts and you'll also have access to the wide variety of free software on the Ubuntu distribution should you need anything else. If you are new to Linux or have never used it, just dive in and have no fear. Ubuntu is a very friendly install with a large community of very helpful people on the net.
Cost:$0
3) The Electronics
For this I chose a popular setup from www.hobbycnc.com
I've gone with the Hobby CNC Pro kit with 208oz motors. All said and done, $310 after shipping plus $31.65 in border fees at the post office.
The main transformer was $65 US and just a hair over $100 Canadian after shipping and border fees.
Cost: $441.65
4) The Hardware
This part is still in the planning stages for cutting parts and gathering the required hardware.
Remaining: $553.35 left in the budget.
Stay tuned for the rest of the build as I progress along.
The next chapter will be The Electronics.
-Colin.
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