Please advise

[Sid]

Hello everyone,
I'm new to this site and cnc in particular
I'm an experienced woodworker and also a resonable model maker
In the last few months I've started using Inkscape to design small card buildings and have finally come to the conclusion that a laser cutter would be an excellent tool to have to cut out card and scribe textures etc.
A weeks worth of laser cutter reviews and then trapsing round Amazon and Ebay left me feeling less than inspired and as is so often the case (for me) I have decided to make my own laser cutter so another weeks worth of 'how I made a cnc machine' videos on youtube has informed me that this should be well within my capability.

I realise that the self build route is going to be more expensive and not without the odd issue, but I figure that I will learn so much more and be better equiped to maintain and repair my self build as and when required.

So now that I've introduced myself, here come the questions..
Having watched a number of self build videos it appears that CNC routers use a powered stepper motor driver with a hefty power supply behind them and the stepper motors on laser cutters seem to be driven by drivers plugged into a cnc shield on an Ardinuo.
I'd be interested to know why this seems to be the case, and would be grateful if someone could enlighten me

Many thanks in advance

[alanesq]

Hi,
A CNC router has to be much stronger and more rigid than a laser cutter as the router will be trying to fight it as it cuts the wood hence they require more powerful motors/controllers.
I built myself a CNC router a while back and was surprised just how easy it was mechanically. The benefit of building your own is that if you are not happy with it you can just start again and use the same motors etc. so you have not lost much money and gained a lot of experience.
BTW - When using Inkscape I find http://jscut.org/ or even better https://cam.openbuilds.com/ work well.
also worth having a look at the esp32 version of GRBL as it is pretty impressive - https://github.com/bdring/FluidNC