New build with recycled parts on a ridiculous budget 120cm*60cm work area

[Desertboy]

Hi, welcome to my first cnc milling machine build (Although not my last I hope) I have a little experience with cnc as I built and use a reprap, I'm just upgrading it from a mendal to a I3 graber when the frame ever arrives from the Ukraine but if you have a cnc machine you can make your own for a lot cheaper. I've been able to score quite a few bits over the last 6 months for nothing except my time and a lot of hard work lol.

I set myself some ambitious goals for my first build.

1. 120cm*60cm work area (Or close as I can get) ***plan has changed 120cm*80cm***
2. Capable of milling aluminium, ply and mdf
3. Be better than if I bought an Xcarve
4. Build it for almost no money although I will if I have to I hope to build this for under £300, I think the spindle will be the most expensive thing as I can't reclaim one of them.
5. Work on Arduino or Raspberry Pi electronics, Arduino is better as I have a spare one and have been using it with cheapo stepper drivers to test the nema motors I recover.

I haven't cad the machine just winging it but will cad the mounting plates for the bearings and the z axis.

Supported rail 25mm I've now cut it down to 2*1.4m lengths for the Y and 1*70cm length for the X so will only have one support on the x which does worry me but the supported rail was free so it's being used, price for 8 bearings from china was £42 delivered through ebay.com (Was more expensive on ebay.co.uk).

Aluminium extrusion 9cm*4.5cm heavy duty profile I have another 2 lengths this long with different profile they are even more chunky and wider) all the lengths are 3.5-3.6m. I also have the t nuts, bolts, angles etc. Price £0 but 1 days very very hard work removing them from the machine. I was allowed to keep em for free as I saved them 1 days work doing it themselves. There was a lot of toolsteel, tool aluminium on that machine.

I have 2 of these one with stepper will grab a pic later. The motor is crazy small for this thing, far too heavy for a z axis as is but did consider selling them on ebay or converting one to a z axis by stripping it down, weld a frame out of steel box section and remount everything in a smaller profile scrapping the 4cm solid aluminium lol. They weigh over 20kg at moment. Would be excellent start to a mini milling machine on it's own as a moving bed but if I do rebuild one as a z axis put a proper nema 23 on it. These cost me a day's pay I flipped a coin with the gaffer over these heads I got them free tails he docked me a day's pay to keep them and I lost lol. Not including this in build cost though yet as I might not use them.

I have 2 nema 23's that work at the moment have powered them up with a ramps 1.4, steppers and ardunio combo one of them makes a whining noise (It's the bigger one) but I think this might be related to 12v from the ramps board at moment. I intend to convert the ramps board to 24v (Lots on reprap forums about this). I bought the cheapest combo of ramps, steppers and arduino on ebay, just over a £10 all in. I expect to have to change some of the capacitors but the mosfets don't matter. So will be using the x carve software at start but will look into the alternatives, I like the arduino though because it's cheap ;)

I've sent the aluminium for cutting today so tomorrow I can pick it up and assemble the frame and fit both the y axis supported rails and the single x axis one but my bearings were only shipped from China this morning so can't do much more on the frame until it comes will be looking for more nema motors as I want a matched pair on the y axis. Always looking for stuff of course so plans might change if I come across bigger sildes, ballscrews, etc. I can start on the Z axis as well and I should probably get a spindle sorted if going to order from China.

My intention over the next 6 months is to collect enough to build a proper 8*4 one which I'll spend a lot more money on a decent spindle.

I intend to belt drive the X&Y I think it's called belt an pinion that I want to use but not sure how I do it yet. I expect this build to take me 4-6 weeks to complete to me carving but who knows.

Total cost so far is £62 including cutting the aluminium, a few days of hard work and swearing and a lot of spanners, alan keys and torx have been snapped along the way.

Wish me luck