Hi Everyone,

New forum member as of today, to give a bit of a background, I have a Marine Engineering and Boat Building business I work with in my time home from offshore, but with the price of metal and everything else lately, the small boat's orders have dried up, I built a large workshop to do this in, and it is sitting empty. I have always done a lot with wood also, and wanted to build a CNC for ages, but have always put it off as i've had so much else to do.

Anyway, i would like to now, but not certain where to start, i am pretty good at Rhino now and can design boats in it, and would be quite happy deisigning a CNC router, but the main issue is knowing what size the steelwork needs to be as a minimum before i start, so i thought i would join this forum and hopefully glean some advice from the people on here.

The router i plan to build will more than likley be designed to take a 1.5 x 3m sheet of aluminium for cutting boat parts from, and other things, but will mainly be used for wood. I plan to use rack and pinion for the long travel and Y axis and to buy a pre made Z axis with ballscrew, also planning on using a 2.2kw water cooled spindle, but i'm afraid that's where the certainty ends, the rest of it, what type rails to use, electrics, breakout boards etc, i'm just not sure what to get, and then the steelwork, can easily build it in my workshop, but sizing it to be strong enough to resist the vibration and twisting is a concern.

I suppose to help, i don't suppose there is anyone on here that has done similar that would be willing to sell a set of plans for it as a proven design?

I look forward to hearing from you all

Thanks
Robert