Hi there, Brandlin here.

Long time woodworker, hobbyist, and general maker. I'm a qualified aeronautics design engineer back in the day, and through job moves and promotions find myself managing people and not dealing with technical detail as often. So I get that kick from tinkering in my garage.

Looking to build a 3 axis router to start with my early teenage son. For cutting wood, plastics and aluminium plate. My intention is to do this from aluminium extrusion. More of a bolt together than a weld together. It will be educational and for fun use to supplement my existing woodworking tools and also as a great project with my lad.

I'm considering a cutting area of about 1000x600 from 60x120 and 60x60 profile and 15mm plate. I'm presuming 16-20mm supported rails, 16mm balls crews and nema 23 motors with twin motors on the X axis. And maybe a 1.5kw spindle or even a wood router to start.

So nothing ground breaking there. I'm not driven by getting great speed (though I know cutting wood requires good speeds) but I do want something rigid enough to give enough precision and accuracy to make more parts from aluminium for this machine and others

However, in the spirit of starting small and thinking big I also have some ideas about extending into the following areas and am trying to ensure any initial design allows for this kind of expansion.
- a verticle table, allowing machining of ends of beam sections.
- horizontal 4th axis index and continuous machining (on large diameters up to 500mm for cutting and engraving on things like snare drums, which will bring precision and accuracy issues).
- auto z depth calibration.
- tool changers - not for any other reason than I like building and tinkering with things and I think it would be a fun addition).

I have some outline plans and thoughts on a concept which I'll share when I commit them to CAD.

Sorry for the longish intro, I'm sure I'll have many more questions.