Salvage parts or buy new?

[elseed]

Hey All,


Newbie here. I have loved reading everyone's posts. I feel like it is time to start a build. I wanted to get everyone's opinion on salvaging vs. buying new. For instance, I have taken apart several scanners and printers from various manufacturers and have a lot of stuff that is either garbage or useful for something. Here are a few things that I think may be useful for a smallish router:

Some rails from printers and scanners. Could these be good for short x or z linear rails?

Some HP stepper motors from HP scanners. These have a nifty little gear box attached. Are they too small to power anything? Would it be a pain to build and get a controller board working?

Some stepper motors from other scanners and printers. These sometimes are used to control the paper feed. The carriage on most ink jet printers nowadays are servo motors.

Which leads me to the servo motors that you can find in printers.

What do you think?

Any feedback would be appreciated. I worry that I would waste a lot of time getting this stuff to work whereas I could just pay a couple hundred at hobbycnc for a kit.

Thanks for your time.

ElSeed

[BobF]

They all look like they would work for printers :-). Any idea the rating?
The steppers appear to have 4 wires and I believe the hobbyCNC drivers will not work with 4 wire motors.
I would guess that there is not a lot of torque in these since they all have gear reduction. If they worked, it would have to be lite machine and not very fast.

[jdell42]

They are probably all too small to be usefull for a CNC of any size.

[elseed]

I have no idea what the oz-in of the motors are. The paper feed motors have five wires each. I guess hp doesn't want people taking apart their printers and doing exactly what I am trying to do with them.

What do you guys think about the rails? They seem very smooth and straight. Would these be better than gas pipe?


Thanks for the info BobF and jdell42.

[jckstrthmghty]

I'm just a novice but I really don't think those rails will be remotely stiff enough for a cutting cnc unless all you plan on cutting is decals, foam, or similar soft materials. Although there are many better alternatives to gas pipe, when braced appropriately gas pipe can provide very good cutting tolerances.

btw what type of materials are you planning cutting with your cnc?

[elseed]

Plastic and maple guitar fretboards.

What are some of the other alternatives to gas pipe I might for a first stab at this?

Tom