Looking for the impossible? A cnc router for 1k? is it possible?

[motoxy]

Jazz the latest fry up in Edinburgh is.........................................fried butter (need a throwing up smiley).

I think that Andy is right. If you think it through and your needs are met by the Chinese m/c then go for it. If you want to come over to the sunny side of Scotland Michael and I would be delighted to see you.

bruce

[Tenson]

Please let us know how the machine works out. I think you are the first here to buy one!You might want to plan putting some vacuum extraction on it, to reduce the mess flying everywhere. Here is a quick shot of hat I did with mine.I did plan to make a dust / sound box for the machine but I'm now building a whole new machine, lol!

(Click for Video)

[itsmillertime]

Bloody hell thats 3 out of 3 that I've had contact with in Scotland and none of you are scotish, are there any Scots left.?? . . . . The first was Micheal and I thought " If I have any trouble helping it will be understanding the lingo" and it's was.??? . . . Couldn't believe my ears when this American Accent dribbled down the phone. . :heehee:

Sorry would be a NO BRAINER she'd GO replaced with "Fit bit" on the side and shit load of materials and components .!! . . . DIVORCE. . Best thing that ever happened to me. .:dance: (Except she screw'd me for all my money and half my business, But hey it's true money's not everything and I'm far far happier without her.!!)

Now days if Girlfriend gives me grief I just say "Adios" and go home to my Nag free zone untill she comes to her sense's.!! . . or . . . sobers up. :rofl:

Good luck with your endevours and I'll just have to wait untill I go upto Micheals or maybe Bruce's for my next Fried mars bar fix.!!

Lol @ Jazz,

Amen,I can understand you there Brother! I can see where you are coming from for sure. I must go back over my wifes "obedience training" and see where I went wrong ;-)

She's a good un, just doesn't appreciate my hobbies/ or the need to have stuff cluttering up our front room etc. Although I'm fortunate we don't actually use our garage for

the car anymore. That's my "man cave" for tools and projects now. Not to say that at some point I won't be building my own machine Jazz and you will be most certainly

welcome.

As for being are their any scots left in Scotland? lol well, I know a fair few were propping up the bars in my local way done south and good few years ago! Perhaps it's grass is always greener? Living up here is good. Generally well tolerated being English up here... But there are certain pubs I avoid and 'sometimes' it's best not to speak too loudly. There are some people where I live that have never and will never visit the next town along (along 5 miles away) So view anyone with a slightly different accent as 'alien'.
Just waiting for a spot of global warming and this place should be lovely.

Jazz the latest fry up in Edinburgh is.........................................fried butter (need a throwing up smiley).

I think that Andy is right. If you think it through and your needs are met by the Chinese m/c then go for it. If you want to come over to the sunny side of Scotland Michael and I would be delighted to see you.

bruce

Thanks Bruce, I will definitely take you and Michael up on your offer! It will probably be when I've done something stupid ;-) HEELLP! lol

Please let us know how the machine works out. I think you are the first here to buy one!You might want to plan putting some vacuum extraction on it, to reduce the mess flying everywhere. Here is a quick shot of hat I did with mine.I did plan to make a dust / sound box for the machine but I'm now building a whole new machine, lol!

(Click for Video)

Hi Tenson,

Thanks for posting up the vid, it looks like a good idea and I will definitely make something up to clear up the debris. I will post up some pics and vids once I have brought one so that it will help any others looking to buy.. or NOT to buy!

Thanks guys

[Lee Roberts]

Sure I put more than that.!!. . . . Did somebody mess with my post.??

Hi Jazz i have looked into this for you and i can confirm that Jonathan edited your post, for some reason there is no "edited by" note on your post like there should be.

To clarify there is only Myself, Irving2008 and Jonathan with access to "post editing" as Jonathan has now joined us as a member of the moderating team.

.Me

[Jonathan]

Hi Jazz i have looked into this for you and i can confirm that Jonathan edited your post, for some reason there is no "edited by" note on your post like there should be.

I've apologised to Jazz for the mistake - it was an accident. The 'edit post' button is right by the reply button and I hit the wrong one. Wont happen again, so 2e0poz is free to post about 5mm pitch screws!

If anyone edits their post within about 2 minutes of it originally being posted then it doesn't display the "edited by" note.

[Swarfing]

Lee does this mean that all post must now run with 10mm pitch screws and run at a thousand miles an hour?

[Jonathan]

Just to add,cost of the machine is one part of the equation, software is the other.

There are sufficient pieces of free software for most things. Two extremes are the free edition of CAMbam, which will only do 2.5D and CNCtoolkit which does anything up to 6-axis for nothing...

CAD sotware, used Sketchup for a while for other use

Can't really help on CAD software as I just use what I got from school, 2D Design V2. It's very user friendly and can draw pretty much anything in 2D, but I don't think you can buy it outside of education.
Just look for one that you export files as a DXF.

[Musht]

Just to add,cost of the machine is one part of the equation, software is the other.

Ran a licence for Mach3 down to 115 GBP on ebay, without a licence your limited to 500 lines of code,which might slow things down or linux EMC for free.

CAM software, its possible to go for a while on trials but eventually you`ll want to setlle on something, personally went for Meshcam, chew another 175 USD, which from my own survey is good value for what it does.There is a lot of other choices but figure around 100 GBP starting point....

CAD sotware, used Sketchup for a while for other uses, but beginning to figure its not great for conversion to CAM models, probably time to learn something more suited and eat probably another 3 figure number there....

Cheers
Adam

Trials of YooFix it drivers detailed elsewhere ;-)

[Swarfing]

Musht for 2D thats free i use QCAD on Linux, there is a windows version here for free http://www.himili.com/blog/downloads...s-gpl-version/. I've never had any issues with this and it works well.

Draftsight is also another good one for free.

[ecat]

Software, out of the apps I've played with these are the ones I've I've kept:

Albatross3D
Free, true 3D modelling sw, a little buggy, out of date, no longer supported but a quick and easy way to view and edit complex 3D models. It supports several file conversion options and is so, so, so much easier to learn than...

Blender
Open source 3D modelling legend but a hell of a learning curve.

CamBam
Lovely sw. I'm still on the trial period because for simple 2D layout I can get away with...

EagleCAD
PCB schematic sw, but if all you need are some holes and simple geometric patterns that fit within the limited 'board size' the free version allows and you are happy with editing and extending the GCode produced by the PCB milling plug in then it does the job.

HeeksCAD / HeeksCNC
Free, CAD + GCode generation. Looks like I don't have it installed right now, maybe too buggy but worth a look.

FreeCAD
Open source. Quite a new entry and under heavy development but worth a play.

MeshLab and NetFabb
Free, used for hacking and repairing complex 3D models.

LinuxCNC
Of course. Not so frightening once you get up to speed, though it is missing the many friendly plugins that can be be used with Mach. Basically, ignore all the complex stuff, use the setup wizard and off you go.