So as I brought up before, I have been dabbling with the idea of making a cnc router. I purchased a z slide like the one in the picture last night so the project is officially started. My plans are for a fixed gantry made from whatever parts I can get my hands on. Hopefully it will be light enough for two people to move comfortably. Any other things I should consider in my design?
YES, Stick to nema 23 minimum motor size! This product ok but not brilliant by any means…way too flex and movement. CNC axis have to be stiff and robust. Consider uses something like this,
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/T8-2-T-type-Screw-Linear-Slide-Stage-X-Y-Z-Axis-Sliding-Table-Module-Effective/32724867966.html?spm=2114.01010208.3.2.CWzKCp&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_1_10152_10065_10151_10068_10130_10136_10137_10060_10138_10155_10062_10156_10154_10056_10055_10054_10059_10099_10103_10102_10096_10148_10147_10052_10053_10142_10107_10050_10051_10084_10083_10080_10082_10081_10110_10111_10112_10113_10114_10179_10181_10037_10033_10032_10078_10079_10077_10073_10070_10123_10124-10033,searchweb201603_10,ppcSwitch_5&btsid=20ee91c4-ef80-4732-b6e2-1dc0d7a414ac&algo_expid=53cc4c73-de7f-4479-b239-f04ba6e41f3c-0&algo_pvid=53cc4c73-de7f-4479-b239-f04ba6e41f3c
Ok thanks for the tip, main reason I grabbed that one was because of price and the hardware it has. Says it comes with ball screw so if it is structurally week I will weld some more metal on it lol. But the one you suggested does look better in almost every way.
As for the nema size x and y will for sure be nema 23. If z can handle it i might just leave it nema 17. Im sure i will have to redesign things like 4 times.
That axis stage looks OK to me. Unless you’re planning on milling steel. Here’s the homemade fixed axis CNC machine that I made. http://i.imgur.com/KXrsIpm.jpg It may not look like much but it works good. The goal was to build a cheap machine.
Paul that is Awesome, I love how gritty it looks. The plan is not to build a mill for cutting steel just wood and aluminum engraving. I have a converted grizzly clone that I can do the heavier stuff with. My mill has a small build area and it is slow, so I’m trying to build something cheap, fastish and with a large build area.
Openbuilds you might just find whatever you need there
Open builds, aren’t those the people who made the OX mill? I could be mistaken but I seem to remember when they were first designing it.
@Will_Dent Thanks. My machine looks like it came out of the corner of a barn but I put it together a bit more carefully than that. Here’s a PCB I isolation routed on it http://i.imgur.com/YyqiE9R.jpg
@Paul_Frederick that looks really good, traces look like they are close to the same depth all the way along.
@Will_Dent Yeah if a machine is cockeyed they grooves be faint or heavy from side to side. When I built my machine I used a precision gage block set and digital calipers to make sure everything was aligned. Just measuring twice was not nearly enough either. There’s no magic going on. To be accurate a CNC has to be accurate. http://i.imgur.com/wpXgLtq.jpg
+Paul Frederick totally agree, I may be breaking out the height gauge for this project
@Will_Dent Yes you need to use instruments with high precision. If there is a dirty secret to building CNC this is it. I built my blocks up and used digital calipers to make my measurements. I didn’t stop until I was within about 0.002 of an inch, or better. That’s why my machine works how it works. The more out of whack a CNC machine is the more out of whack it is going to be. It is enunciating the obvious, but this issue still manages to elude many.
When you watch people that know what they’re doing putting machines together they use dial indicators to check as they go. They’re not relying on luck to make it all go together for them.
All a case of uncommon common sense really.
The top and the button part should be in a bit thicker material like 10 mills , for vibration part and the bigger surfaces cold easy be stronger with 10X20 mills reinforsment mountet on the outsside pn paralalel to the 2 pipes "solid round sorry for my bad english jope u kan reaad it , then it could take mutch more hevy duty, if someone want it to…I have build the same as that in the picture and the vibrations was pretty big problem… i mt option of usage maybe a litlle to big router… 
Now i´m thinking big,solid as…
But it is a nixe build!
