Strike CNC (My first CNC router)

[Shinobiwan]

Its arrived!

I can tell you it wasn't fun getting it off the lorry and into position. I had a couple of mates around to give a hand and the 3 of us thought we'd try to lift the whole thing. Wrong! It weighs around half a ton and quickly abandoned that idea. In the end we had to break it down into 3 sections for us to be able to comfortably man handle it off the lorry and into position. We tackled it by removing the router from the base and discovered this was by far where the bulk of the weight was. Once that lump was gone the base was pretty light although a bit awkward to manoeuvre because of the size. Before attaching the router back on to the base we spent a lot of time levelling in all directions as the floor does slope a little. Once that was done we bolted the router back on. Last part was the top enclosure and carrying this around wasn't too bad but getting it back on the machine was a right pain in the backside. The low ceiling in the workshop and tall gantry made it impossible and after some head scratching and a fair bit of swearing we dismantled it and then re-assembled on the machine. Ugh, never want to do that again.

By the time we'd done it was 9pm and way too late to start taking it for a test drive. Its going to be the weekend now before I have time and its going to kill me to wait. At least its setup ready to go now anyway.

First impressions are positive. The build is sturdy and the photo's don't do it justice at all. I've tried to shake the gantry and there's no play or flex whatsoever. Very well put together and polished package.

Here's some images.