If you're looking for a good compromise between building and buying a commercially available turn-key CNC router, you might be interested in a guy on eBay who sells kits. I bought his commercial (linear rail) 24" X 49" kit almost two years ago. I use LinuxCNC, of course. I bought it bare (no electronics) and added my own stepper motors and drivers to save money and get the motors and drivers I wanted. I'm reasonably close to the eBay seller, so I picked it up to save $200 in shipping. I built it in my brother's garage so he could use it for his woodworking. I used it a couple of nights ago to cut 50 holes in a 12" X 24" X 1" plastic sheet to make an ER20 tool rack for my current CNC milling machine project and it worked very well.
It's a complete kit, so it's almost as easy to assemble as most of the commercially available CNC routers that require some on-site assembly. http://www.ebay.com/itm/261855407885 I liked it so well that I bought a 24" X 24" linear rod CNC router kit from him for my basement shop. http://www.ebay.com/itm/131488198442 That project is now slated for later this summer, after the mill, lathe and laser. I'm on a CNC project roll! I'll build an 80/20 machine base for it with the vacuum dust collection in the base and the top will be fully enclosed to contain the dust and noise. There really isn't much to these CNC router kits. You could simply buy the ball screws and linear rail on eBay from Chinese suppliers and they're sometimes available as a CNC router motion control kit. Then you could make a few simple aluminum brackets and plates, and design the enclosure and 80/20 aluminum extrusion machine base to provide the support for the motion control components. You'd probably save several hundred dollars over buying the kit from Ed on eBay, but as much as I enjoy that sort of machine design, I decided that I'd be better served by purchasing the kit and spending my time assembling and wiring rather than designing and building. YMMV. He has a 4' X 8' CNC router kit as well, and some optimized for plasma cutting too. The prices are significantly less than the other systems you were considering, and these kits offer complete flexibility in what electronics you use. I buy a 24" X 28" X 12" powder coated and stainless shop cabinet from Seville to use as an electrical enclosure. https://www.sevilleclassics.com/storage_wall_cabinet_ultra_hd I screw the parts to the back wall, add some wireway, and wire the electrical panel. A CNC electrical panel takes about a day to build and wire, usually spaced over a week or so. The rest of the project takes another day or two, total. I really don't think it's all that much more difficult than assembling and setting up a commercial CNC router. If you can live without the tool change spindle, this might be a good way to go. Add a three phase water cooled spindle motor and VFD (~$300 on eBay) and about $600 worth of motors and electronics, and you're good to go. On 04/20/2015 06:04 PM, Erik Friesen wrote: > I have been casting around for a new pre built router in the $5 to $10K > range, however it seems a lot of routers come with the whole kit and > caboodle, which means it doesn't use linuxcnc and comes with the computer > and all. I have too much time invested in different custom things to > switch to something else. Does this leave me with building something > myself again? > > I currently have an oak framed router (16x20 work area), gecko drives, mesa > 5i25, etc, but I get tired of tightening it up every month. I'd like to > find something where I could put my existing equipment to use. > > Some I have looked over - > http://www.camaster.com/product/stinger-i/ > http://www.blurrycustoms.com/#!store/cu2p/!/IMAVX/p/34881281/category=8927047 > http://xzerocnc.com/raptor.htm ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ BPM Camp - Free Virtual Workshop May 6th at 10am PDT/1PM EDT Develop your own process in accordance with the BPMN 2 standard Learn Process modeling best practices with Bonita BPM through live exercises http://www.bonitasoft.com/be-part-of-it/events/bpm-camp-virtual- event?utm_ source=Sourceforge_BPM_Camp_5_6_15&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=VA_SF _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
