Thinking of buying/building machine for PCB milling

[njh]

Don't see Mr MD around here much do ya.!!. . ..

Something funny going on - the same day as your post is deleted; I get an email reply from Kevin Marchant - two weeks after my enquiry.

We can offer / produce an A4 with ballscrews, steppers, controller, spindle and Mach3 for £1000 + £29.50 shipping

If that is how long it takes to produce a once sentence quote, I don't fancy my chances of support. I am better off buying from China.

[njh]

In other news, I asked why the UK postage costs were so huge (£200) on this 3040T-DQ Router and quickly received the response:

Hello,

Thank you for you are interested in this machine from us.
We have it out of stock from our UK warehouse right now, and the coming batch can be available about 10 days later.
Then we raise the price for controlling sale volume.
Hope you can understand.

Best regards

- tool-zoom

Item: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/-/200933892175
Seller: http://myworld.ebay.co.uk/tool-zoom

[njhussey]

The best thing to do is to make your own, it will knock the spots off most things commercially available for the same price and in the process you'll get a better understanding of how they work and therefore (I can only guess as I'm just starting to build mine) will be better equipped to fix them when things go wrong/break.

If you look at, for example, the MD ones and the cheap China ones and then look at the build threads you will see the difference between a "home made" one and a "commercial" one. Making your own will enable you to do things like use supported rails, make the gantry much stronger (and normally a bit lower) use better quality materials for the same price you would have paid for a ready made one. There are enough guys on the forum here who will cast a critical eye over your design and once it's complete do any machining for you if you need it allowing you to assemble it with simple hand tools/workshop tools.

In my opinion a ready bought machine is only really good for scratching the surface at playing with CNC machines, in more ways than one! You will undoubtedly, no almost certainly from my reading various forums, need to update components to get the performance and finish you require. I did consider going down the ready made route before I started but soon dismissed it and now I will end up with a machine that will be capable of cutting Aluminium even though I started out wanting one that would cut Balsa and ply.

As an example of costs the MD A4 ball screw machine starts at £3,555.00 For that you'll get a machine that has a machining Area of 300mm x 220mm x Z Axis 155mm, my machine (when I get my finger out and start making it) should come in well below that and will have a cutting area of 1000 x 500 x 200. As far as I'm concerned it's a no brainer! If size is an issue, i.e. you don't need a machine that big then you'll be able to make a much stronger/accurate machine for half that cost.

[njh]

Would love to build my own CNC router one day and from reading and learning, it doesn't look as if it is as difficult as I first imagined.

But at the moment I have decided that for now I want to just get up and running and make some PCBs...

[njhussey]

Did you not see the 3040 for sale with everything you need in the for sale area? If you upgraded the trapezoidal lead screws to ball screws then you'd almost be there?

[njh]

Did you not see the 3040 for sale with everything you need in the for sale area? If you upgraded the trapezoidal lead screws to ball screws then you'd almost be there?

Couldn't find it before for some reason but found this now:
http://www.mycncuk.com/forums/items-...tor-mach3.html

I don't need a PC - and think I can buy a new one with ballscrews for less...

[m_c]

In other news, I asked why the UK postage costs were so huge (£200) on this 3040T-DQ Router and quickly received the response:

It's a way of avoiding some of the extorionate ebay fees, as you don't get charged fees on postage/carriage, so they include the customs charges in it.

[Jonathan]

It's a way of avoiding some of the extorionate ebay fees, as you don't get charged fees on postage/carriage, so they include the customs charges in it.

Not any more - they very recently changed the rules so sellers are now charged the final value fee on postage in addition to the final price.

[m_c]

You do realise fees vary depending on what country you're registered in, and to what country you're selling?

We get stung pretty hard for fees due to ebay's near monopoly in the UK. Other countries where ebay don't have as big a market share get far better rates. It does annoy me selling stuff on ebay in this country, that ebay end up with near 14% of everything by the time you factor in that they also own paypal.

[njh]

Discovered the 'CNCDudez New 2012 Desktop Mini Muscle CNC Machine' last night:
CNC Design Limited - CNC Desktop Router

Unlike other suppliers Sean actually replied to my email!

Has anyone else here bought one?
I suspect it surpasses my requirements for milling PCBs.