Down the rabbit hole we go!

Hello all,

I've been wanting to dip my toes into the world of CNC for a long time, however fate decided to throw me into the deep end without armbands!

Over Christmas I was fortunate enough to rescue a Suregrave CNC router from literally being skipped. Judging by the date stickers it was built in ~2005. This thing is very solidly built but I have no electronics to go with it. There is a case that the CNC hooks into which contains a 48v PSU but no controller board. I've been told it has not been used on over 10 at least, and had very little use before then. Mechanically it has very little wear from what I can see.

I've attached a photo from the interweb of a very similar machine to mine (just a different colour). Mine's still in bits as I had to dis-assemble most of it to get it home!

Attachment 30754

I have lashed up a stepper driver from Amazon to an Arduino and managed to get all the steppers to move, so I think i'm off to a start. It has an old 240v router spindle on it which is toasted - I do wonder if that killed the controller board? It will need to be replaced.

Now the plan!

I'm thinking about getting a DCSS v3.1 controller and a 1.5 or 2.2kw air or water cooled spindle and VFD to go with it.

A fully built controller like the DCSS v3.1 is a very plug and play solution, but their's a part of me who want to go down the Arduino GRBL route (I have previously swapped a K40 laser cutter to GRBL / Lightburn which worked really well). Either way I'm not keen on having a PC based solution like Mach3 or LinuxCNC - PC's and dust never mix, well not in my workshop anyway!

I'd really like to hear people's opinions on what controller options are out there, are there any i've missed? Is the DCSS v3.1 actually any good?

Also any supplier recommendations would would be useful, otherwise is Amazon or eBay pot luck!

I'm hoping to learn alot from the board, and hope I can contribute just as much back over time.

Peter