Thinking of buying/building machine for PCB milling

[richie00boy]

Thanks richie00boy, that is really good to know - how did you choose an eBay seller to buy from?

It's easier than you think. There were basically two machines, the 3020 type with moving gantry and the sable type with moving table. I chose the 3020 type as it took up less desk space and a recommendation for this type came from a mate who worked with very high end CNC machines, can't remember now what his reason was though. Then I just chose the cheapest seller who shipped from the Portsmouth warehouse. There is no difference between sellers, they are all just drop shippers for the Portsmouth warehouse.

backlash issues meant that if you cut all the tracks for say 3 pcbs first, when you came to drilling run, the holes wouldn't align with the tracks!)

I'll have to see if that becomes an issue when I use the machine for bigger jobs. I priced up ballscrews recently and I think I could convert the X and Y axis for about 50 quid.

I do hear a lot of people saying the controller you get is rubbish, but touch wood mine seems OK despite some errors on my behalf not setting it up correctly, which may have stressed it more than normal. That is the one thing I was lucky with, got a mate to help me set it up as settings provided by the seller were not right.

I can let you have the settings file if you need it, should you buy the same machine.

[njh]

Thanks for the advice HankMcSpank and richie00boy

Searching for ball screw in the title/description or 3040Z really reduces the result set. Think I will probably go for a ballscrew from the start.

It looks like the newer/'updated' models have a black control box, like the ones on Yoocnc 3020 3040 6040 series - carving-cnc.com. Some even have YOOCNC written on them in the pictures.

Good to know that I should expect to want to / need to replace the stepper driver boards at some point.