Entry CNC machine

[Neale]

Andrew, I sympathise with you but this is a fairly common request, and the answers usually don't please anyone - the person who replies because they will have to tell you it can't be done, and you for finding out that your budget isn't compatible with your requirements...

There are a few machines out there in this kind of price range. They all use cheap guide rail systems of one sort or another, to keep cost down and allow relatively easy home-building, but they tend to be fiddly to set up and prone to wear/go out of adjustment relatively quickly. So you spend a lot of your time overcoming the limitations of the machine.

A friend of mine bought a "cheap" machine from China about 3 years ago. He needed it for his business in order to avoid having to sub-contract engraving jobs in wood, and it has proven to be a useful and usable machine. That cost a touch under £3K, with carriage and duty, for a 600x900 machine, and probably represents about as cheap as you want to go and have a sensible machine. Frankly, it's not worth the manufacturers building much smaller than this because at a commercial level, smaller machines aren't needed and in practice do not cost that much less to build and sell - a machine with half the capacity would probably cost 80-90% of the price anyway. Then there are the really cheap machines, such as you find on eBay, which are generally regarded as a kit of not very good parts which will need a fair bit of fettling and, after a short time, all the electronics to be scrapped and replaced. Assuming that they do a halfways decent job in the first place. Then there are a few UK-based "manufacturers" who build machines of, it is widely reported on this forum, of debatable quality.

This forum has a member who does build machines, but I can't see him building anything in that size for that price. You just can't buy the basic components of a decent quality for that money.

I have built two CNC routers. The first was, in all honesty, a bit of fun. It was the JGRO design (lots of info available with a google search), MDF throughout, threaded rod from Screwfix as leadscrews, guide rails from heavy steel tube and roller-skate bearings. I spent more time shimming, tweaking, and generally fiddling with that machine than I did cutting, but it taught me a lot and was great fun. But so frustrating when you had a 15 minute job to do but took an hour to readjust the soggy MDF each time. Mk2 went the other way - about 1500x750 cutting area, steel tube, welded, proper profile rails, ballscrews, decent electronics, etc. Raw materials probably cost around £2K or maybe a bit more although could have been cheaper (stuff is available these days from China for less than I paid. At least pre-Brexit it would have been).

The kind of thing to which you linked is kind-of OK-ish and with a performance better than my MDF effort, but less than the Youtube videos would have you believe.

Take a look at some of the build logs on this forum, and particularly look at the aluminium profile machines which are arguably easier to build at home and can give decent results in use. Not sure if you are going to do it all for £1K all the same, but you can spread cost over a period if you are building yourself.

Good luck in any case - you weren't being ignored, but you have to recognise a certain frustration amongst the regulars here that the requirements given are not entirely compatible