Building from Scratch or follow some plans?

[ecat]

We find ourselves in much the same boat: similar position, similar design goals and similar decisions- as far as they go :) I can offer little in the way of construction help as I've never done this before, but I wish you luck.

I'm still at the point of deciding if the end justifies the cost (1), to that end I need both a cost and an understanding of design limitations and to that end I need a design based on my budget. All a bit chicken and egg (2), lol.

To get the ball rolling I've downloaded a couple of CAM packages to look at and a trial copy of Alibre Design, collecting models of various parts that may make it into the final design (3) - testing parts is cheaper this way ;-). I hope this will get my head into an engineering mind-set and playing with some design software feels to be the right place to start, after all there is little point building a computer controlled machine if you have zero understanding of the software required to make it all work :)

(1) Cost... Ouch. The old mantra, buy cheap buy twice, haunts me every time I look at ball-screws. Hiwin rail and blocks just make me cry and I know a lower speed spindle will be a must and.... I'm probably preaching to the converted here.

(2) Silly phrase, evolution of course dictates the egg must have come first.

(3) What the ....? Register, register, register, everywhere I go it appears the same. I'm trying to give you guys some money, why do you make me go through loops and hoops to get a model of some profile or even just a price list? Grr. "We want to track all our prospective customers". Fine, do that, but isn't email address enough? Name, address, telephone number, colour of socks, so old fashioned, so last decade </rant>