DIY CNC Kit Advice

[Lance5136]

Hi everyone,

Our team, 5136, is considering purchasing a DIY CNC Kit:

http://www.mydiycnc.com/complete_kit

We would get a more professional (and larger) CNC if we could, but funding is already tough enough in our rural community. Do any teams have any experience with DIY kits like the one in the link above? We are only looking to use it for small purposes, like cutting out small aluminum brackets and making gears.

We found out about the kit from a list derived from the cnczone forums: http://blog.ponoko.com/2011/07/15/pr...d-router-kits/

[AdamHeard]

Come up to our shop again and we'll go over a lot of stuff with you.

We've made one, and converted a few, so we can really help you get set up with what you'd want.

[DonRotolo]

Just have realistic expectations of what a $700 unit driven by what is essentially a dremel tool can accomplish. It will be good and cheap, but not fast. When cutting aluminum, you need some kind of chip management (such as a jet of compressed air) or you can expect to break bits. Cooling would be good too, such as a mist cooler.

Definitely get the limit switch option ($17) if relatively untrained operators may access the machine.

Also consider that you need 3 bits of software to run it: a design program (like Inventor or Solidworks), a G-Code generator (like Cut2D from Vectrix) and a G-Code interpreter (which appears to come with the unit).

This appears to be an OK machine.
If I were spending $700, I would find a small manual mill instead, it will do more; of course, it is not CNC and some operator skill is required.

Once you have it running it would benefit us all if you would share your experiences with all of us.

[CENTURION]

Originally Posted by DonRotolo

Definitely get the limit switch option ($17) if relatively untrained operators may access the machine.

Also consider that you need 3 bits of software to run it: a design program (like Inventor or Solidworks), a G-Code generator (like Cut2D from Vectrix) and a G-Code interpreter (which appears to come with the unit).

This appears to be an OK machine.
If I were spending $700, I would find a small manual mill instead, it will do more; of course, it is not CNC and some operator skill is required.

Agreed. Limit switches can save you from a lot of issues, headache, and damage. Our Little mill has no limit or home switches, so we have to double-check our travels on every program to make sure nothing will crash (at least for now, we've got a solution in the works).

For software, as a FIRST team you can get either Inventor or Solidworks for free. I prefer Solidworks, and I've just begun playing with HSMWorks (A free CAM plugin for SW) and it seems very nice, much better than other free CAM software out there. But I believe HSMWorks is available for Inventor too, under a different name.

I've also got to agree that a manual mill may be a better investment. Many FRC parts are simple enough to be made by hand.

[protoserge]

I don't have much to offer over Don since he's got some great points that I agree with.

I will say that you could get a Shapeoko 2 for that price. You can even upgrade to a little more capable spindle for $80 (or a generic Chinese VFD spindle from eBay)