737 Basement Simulator

Ok, CNC mills for home use? Not under $2500 if you want to buy one. Why not build one? I did! With big use of my scrapheap instincts, I managed to do a 3-axis computer controlled milling machine for under $200. (and some coffee-bread as bribes:-)

The mill is built from 22mm MDF board. A good material with great strength and easy to work with. As the mill isn’t to be used for other than wook and plastic, the flex in the material can be overseen.

The motors are the document-feeder belt motor from a Sharp copier. This is where the coffee-bread went, to get me into their junk-corner. This was a really good deal, 4 dollars of bread got me servo motors for approx 600 dollars.

Electronics i used to contol the mill is the 3 Axis 4AUPC Driver Board Kit from http://www.hobbycnc.com , which is steered by a PC with EMC installed under Linux. http://www.linuxcnc.org/

Here are some pictures:

These pictures are from running the first tests and levelling a work area to mount the materials on.

2006-03-29:

Added a video of the mill cutting a VHF panel from my CAD drawings. Download if here.

2006-04-04:

Link to the page about make a whole panel with the CMC machine here.