Hi Guys,

I'm not really a 'new member' as I joined this forum in 2009. Back then I was looking for a UK source of stepper motors for my first router, a CNC kit I bought from the US called a Phlatprinter. As this is my first post though I thought i'd post in this forum .

The Phlatprinter is a quirky little 3-axis machine made from MDF and was designed for cutting foam RC airplanes using a Dremel. The Dremel is mounted in a cabinet on an X/Z gantry and cuts upwards into foam that passes between feed rollers above (like a printer feeds paper). It uses basic components sourced from DIY stores and is driven using a cheap 3-axis board and Mach3 : Original Phlatprinter DIY Kit.

The machine was a great introduction to CNC for me and i've used it for the past 4 years. I've also done a few upgrades which have allowed me to cut thin plywood, G10 fiberglass and i've even used it to route copper traces on a PCB.

Unfortunately the router does have some pitfalls even for light work. Firstly you can't see the spindle or cutting bit while it's working, also tool changes aren't possible without removing the material being processed. The main annoyances for me however are that the material can sometimes skew slightly when cutting large files and accuracy, although surprisingly good for such a basic machine isn't as good as i'd like.

So... A few weeks ago I decided it was about time to spend some money and upgrade to a more capable, traditional style flatbed machine. I started searching this and other CNC forums to see if there were any individuals or companies selling kits which met my ideal criteria. That being a cutting area of 500mm x 1000mm x 50mm, capable of cutting thicker/harder material than my current machine, good accuracy (+/-0.2mm) and within a build budget of £2000.

Why a kit? Well, after a few searches it soon became apparent that for a pre-built machine I wasn't going to get anything matching my specs for less than 4K. I don't have access to any metalworking tools apart from a pillar drill, and I don't really have the knowledge, time or inclination to design something from scratch.

My search for kits didn't yield many successful results. The majority of kits (or plans for that matter) were based on imperial rather than metric hardware. Also the cutting beds were nowhere near the dimensions I really wanted. After spending hours searching the CNC forums I decided to change my approach and see if there were any ideas on the European RC forums. I figured people there would probably have similar requirements to myself.

I finally stumbled upon a German forum which had an active CNC sub-forum. With the help of Google translate I found a few interesting machines which seemed close to my specs. One was an aluminium based kit which is unfortunately out of production at the moment : CNC-Fräsmaschinen

The other is a plywood based kit shown here : CNC-Holzfraese, Modellbau CNC Fraese die sogar als Möbel durchgeht Page 6. I'm really interested in the plywood kit. Although i'd prefer an aluminium design, the design seems good and the hardware it's designed to use seems of a high spec. The plywood kit is about £400 and is designed to use 16mm ballscrews and 16mm supported rails : CNC Holzfraese V3 Bausatz (M) Siebd Kugelumlaufspindel-CNC Holzfraese V3 Bausatz (M) 12mm Sieb

I think this might be a good basic setup which I could upgrade in the future if I wanted to.

If you've read this far then thanks for reading it all! Any input or comments would really be appreciated.

Cheers,
Si.