After a couple of months looking, reading and learning about home made CNC machines, I started cutting out my 1" MDF machine today.
As I found other guys threads so interesting and useful I thought I would complete a build diary myself, and if a new person gets one piece of information out of it for themselves then it will be worth while.
Decided my first machine would be the learning platform and I will use simple construction and electronics.
My mate brought his Circular saw with a new MDF cutting blade and we cut everything out lovely and square.
The base is 36" wide x 33" deep, it has a fixed gantry with a table size of 24"w x 16"d.
I think I should have about a 20 x 12 cutting area.
I am using 1" dia stainless tube with a ground finish for the rails and bought a load of abec9 bearings on ebay.
I have three steppers, 1A, 1.2A and a 1.35A all unipolar nema 23 size.
Came across extremly cheap driver board from
http://www.kitsrus.com/ (although I bought mine from the UK distributor.)
The K179 unipolar driver board kit was only £9.95 works great had my motors on the bench last night buzzing away.
The board has a manual control of speed and direction so is great for setting up without a pc connected.
Going to use a ATX PSU at 12v and some 6R8 resistors.
I do have some nice new in the box vexta 266 127 ozins motors that I bought from a guy, but I intend to keep them for the next one !
Don't have any fancy cad drawn plans of my machine all on bits of paper. I will see if I can post something to let people see the design.
All for now.