Hi!
This all started out about two years ago when my father bought a small benchtop mill. Well, it was fun using it but it was a bit low tech. It started to look on the web for used cnc machines, found out that they were a bit over my budget
, then I tripp over this site:
http://www.engadget.com/2006/06/29/h...achine-part-1/
started to really seach the net, came in here and then I was on my way on the quest for my very own cnc machine. Maby this build blog can help me move on and give me some nice ideas from all of you cnc people out there. So, here we go!
My first though, since I then lived in an apartment was that i had to fit under my desk, about 600x1000x600 mm, eaven the wife was ok with it!
As you may guess from the title of this thear I worked for a company that constantly throws away really nice industrial stuff from there R&D. I was aiming for alu profiles since i knew they came up in the bin from time to time. After collecting a lot of stuff my design after alot of tweaking looked like this:
The most work has been done on the Z-axis. I got my hand on some really nice rollerscrews, and then got a frind in the workshop to make me a housing, for two angular contact bearings.
At this time I heard that they were scrapping real big machine, and there were linear bearings that I just couldnt resist. problem was that they were a bit long for my z-axis. I desided to keep the length in case I would like to rebuild it later on. I used the length of the rails to prevent deflection. The design looks like this:
I will use a belt (AT5) to drive the Z axis, 2:1 to get same pitch on all axis.