I was not happy with the performance of any of the CNC router plans currently available, nor with the prices of kits and commercial machines. So I decided to come up with my own design. Not to mention, it is more fun to design and build your own, right?
I laid out a set of performance and cost goals and then designed a machine to meet those goals. However, this series of posts is not about that exact machine. I am first building a proof-of-concept machine that is lower cost and easy to build (therefore the wood frame). This will allow me to learn and flush out any issues with the design before building a more expensive and time consuming version of it. I did however attempt to design the wood frame to be as strong as possible so that it will have enough performance to make parts for the originally designed machine.
My rough goals for this wood framed version of the machine:
- Working area of 37″ x 25″ x 6″ (940 mm x 635 mm x 150 mm).
- Accuracy and precision in the ballpark of 0.001″ over 12″.
- Performance – will leave this for later discussion.
- Learn and test the concepts needed to build my originally designed machine.
- Have a machine to start making parts for the next machine.
- Have fun!
I will give some design details in my next post.