I'm a professional embedded systems engineer that dabbles with mechanics on the side as I like to have the whole picture. Even as I'm an engineer at work, I'm still passionate about creating and modifying stuff when I'm off work. I have two 3D printers which are more or less always under re-construction and upgrade. Recently I bought one of them cheap chinese CNC3040T 4 axis CNC machines as a complement to my printers. I believe that the primary application for this machine will be PCB isolation routing manufacturing and some simpler geometry stuff like templates for airfoils and things like that. Oh, forgot to tell you, I'm also a Model RC aircraft pilot and builder.

I have chosen to not use the USB motion controller that came with the unit. It turned out to be a cloned unlicensed PlanetCNC controller making the choice of control software limited to only PlanetCNC. Instead, I've bought a Pokeys USB/parallell port interface which I plan to use with MACH4 hobbyist version. I'm still taking my very first steps in the CNC world just jogging the machine around, watching tutorials and reading manuals so I can't really tell yet how it's working. I think I'll run my first test pass routing a rectangle in a wooden block pretty soon.

Watch out for questions... some of them might even seem... eh... stupid

/Thom