Hi All,

So I'm starting this thread quite a way through the build process. I didn't want to document the entire thing from the start as I knew this was going to take me a long long time.

I built myself a Momus CNC build some years back and got the bug, but that machine is pretty limited as it flexes all over the place (on the Z axis). It's also belt driven which is an absolute pain in the backside as the belt pulleys loosen over time. I initially wanted a machine for wood and after time started machining more and more aluminium, so the new machine I want to be two fold: rigid enough for working aluminium but with a much bigger footprint for working on larger hard wood projects. I also do quite a bit of diamond drag engraving on aluminium which the old machine isn't accurate enough to do.

I basically have been piecing it together bit by bit over the last couple of years, and at the current stage it's moving and wired, but I have some changes to make for sure.

The Gantry is 80 x 160 profile and its running on two 80 x 120 profiles in the Y axis.

Linear rails are all 20mm THK ( the black Y axis rails are Raydent(?) coated). I got all the higher end motion parts used (but they're in great shape).

The Z axis was a real Achilles heel of my old machine, terrible design, so this new Z axis was bought as a full unit from an old machine in Korea (used for IC production I believe) it is made from stainless for the most part and has 15mm THK rails and a THK ground ball-screw for movement and optical limit switches. I milled an aluminium backplate for it and mounted it to the Y axis blocks.

I have a Ground NSK ball-screw on the X axis, positioned on the top of the extrusion. I chose to do that as I wanted to get the Z axis as close to the rails as I could.

The Y axis is driven both sides with ball-screws (Chinese 1605) but I'm really not happy with those so I just ordered some 20mm (2005) ground ballscrews from TBI. I would have liked something better brand wise but I think they should be okay.

Most of this is probably overkill in a aluminium based router I know, but I want to get it as functional as I can really.

You'll notice I haven't got a base/table as yet, the reason being is I'm a bit undecided about that. I've been toying with the idea of mounting it to a wall (and have some blocks ready for doing that, but I'm struggling to decide. I really don't yet know how I could effectively level the wall surface in practice before fixing the machine to it (any advice would be greatly appreciated.)

The spindle looks like the regular cheapo chinese ones but I went with a company Jain Ken for this, it's 1.5Kw ER16 and has ceramic bearings, as far as I can measure it has no runout on it (!). Mind you my dial indicators aren't serious quality, but it's definitely accurate enough for my needs.

For VFD I went with RS510 from RS electronics, it works really well and is essentially a Teco 510 it seems.

I made up the control box from scratch, a linear power supply (70V) was made with a transformer, regulator plus capacitors and I put a soft-start on the incoming AC to smooth out the turn on a little.

The stepper drivers are all AM882 running at 8th micro stepping. I'm really impressed with these drivers, they're very smooth.

I'll figure out how to upload some images shortly, and add them here.