Router Build Mk 1

[hoppo]

After a fair few years of 'thinking' about it, and a few months learning a CAD package to make sure it'll stand a chance of working I've finally started work on my Mk 1 CNC router. I should have started it a few years ago but living in a flat I don't think it would have gone down to well with the neighbours. Anyhow since then I've only gone and got married to the good lady wife, moved house twice and generally spent the last two years decorating and doing house renovations. It's all been worth it though as I now have a bit of spare time, and the house we bought has a shed. My shed! It's my little world where I can do what I like and the Mrs is more than happy to leave me be in there.

So I've been ordering some profile and some ally, set to work with a bench drill and made some headway with my build. As it was you lot here that inspired me to get on with it all those years ago I though I'd let you know how I've been getting on and share my findings and exasperations! So here's some photo's to tell the story so far.


A bit of space to spread out in the shed. Ally profile supplied and cut to specified size from KJN in Leicestershire. Two 60 x 60 profiles to support the supported rails and Five 30 x 60 profiles as cross beams to create the base.


Profile nuts and angle brackets again supplied by KJN. Captive hex nuts from eBay. If you're going to build your own router, get loads of varying sizes. I kept buying what I thought I needed to save a few pounds here and there. In the end I decided if I needed 1 I might as well buy 100 as you will use them.


First couple of cross beams attached. This is all very easy, just like playing with posh (expensive) meccano.


Second piece of 60 x 60 profile attached. Not yet tightened up.


All cross members are now attached, still not tightened up.


Placed the whole thing on the flattest thing I own. A brand new piece of 18mm MDF on a steel bench that I've welded together. I have photo's of this construction if anyone's particularly interested. It's not that interesting though. Just a few mitred bits of steel angle welded together in the form of a cube which my spirit level tells me is flat. Everything is now firmed up and all seems pretty rigid.


The 20mm supported linear rails that I bought from Chai about 4 years ago attached using profile nuts and 12mm captive hex bolts. These rails are 1150mm in length with ball screws that I bought as a package from Chai. My first major bit of advice is design your machine to the nth degree before buying anything. I didn't and bought a package of rails, bearings, ball screws etc thinking it would spur me on. It did to some extent but I think it would have been easier to get the supplier to make things to my requirements, rather than me building my machine to the constraints placed on me by the lengths of the ballscrews. Just because it's a package doesn't mean that they are necessarily the best dimensions to work together. For example as we'll see later on my Z axis I have a ball screw of 350mm with rails of 300mm. After spacing the bearings sensibly to maximise the strength, I had travel on the Z Axis of just over 100mm, which is fine for what I need but there's effectively 200mm of ball screw there that will never be used.

I hope you find this build log useful. More to follow....