Building a CNC Router

[BladesNBarrels]

Man that thing looks stout!
CNC is one of those things I have always wanted to learn, but have never had the concentrated time and energy to execute on.
I will follow this thread with much interest!

Come join the Colorado CNC User Group.
Monthly meeting currently via WebEx, usually starts 9:00 am on 3rd Wednesday. Every 3rd month, meeting is on Saturday.
A lot of knowledge and experience in the group. Vectric software and Legacy CNC were the primary purpose of the original group, but it has evolved to all CNC users.
I bought a Shark HD4 from Rockler as a total novice and the group has helped with safety, knowledge, and projects.
Just search Colorado CNC User Group on Facebook or contact me for information on members, projects, etc.

[bczandm]

I sell industrial woodworking equipment and I just delivered and installed(Installed by our service techs) this Holz-Her CNC 5' x 12' table to one of my customers. 15 HP router, 10 vertical and 4 horizontal drills and a 12 position tool changer. It's designed to process a 4x8' sheet for cabinet parts...cut to size, bore for hinges, line boring and construction boring the entire sheet in six minutes or less. Edgeband the parts and then assemble. It's good to see the level of interest there is here in CNC machines!

[Grant H.]

Can you clamp a few of those "nuts" together. To avoid having to do them individually, or easier in the long run for a quick pass on each one ?

Going to see what I can come up with here in a bit. Part of me hopes I can come up with a quick way to do multiples, but if not, it shouldn't take too long to trim them on each side individually.

God bless JohnnyEgo and his pic tutorials on his many projects - it's motivated a few others (like you Grant) to do the same. While there are projects such as this that I will never attempt, I love watching the progress on how something like this was engineered and assembled.

Amazing project you have and like others, I'm anxious to see this progress and turn into a fully functional tool. I'm especially curious what your first project will be that you'll use this CNC to build.

Between JohnnyEgo and seeing build threads on CO4x4.org back in the day, I have realized how much enjoyment I get out of seeing what others are putting their time into, so I figure why not give back...

First actual pieces on it will be parts to replace/improve the build of this machine. After that, uh... sure.... This all started because I wanted to build a machine. My oldest brother built a 3d printer, probably 12+ years ago (long before they were common hobby machines you could buy), we built our CNC Plasma table, and my other brother has built 1 Laser Cutter, and has the parts to build another larger one, so that sort of left the Router as an option to build.

Since starting to acquire stuff for this, video's like the one below have piqued my interest, as I actually really don't like the 70's vintage cabinets in our kitchen.

Speaking of fireball tools, that vice he built is on my to-do list. Dude makes nice stuff.

I've always wanted a cnc plasma table, but gotta build a shop to put it in first.

Yes he does, and it's fun to see some of the absurd stuff he builds too.

CNC Plasma is great fun. My brothers and I built ours, and given the limited "shop" space that we have currently, it's mobile, but it works great for the fab work that we have in the SCADA comms business...

I learn a ton of stuff from Irving, who is more of a Renaissance man than me.

On an unrelated note, Grant once cut me out a piece of plate steel that my 800 pound jointer rests on, on top of some Great Lakes Casters. It made me the king of the jointer forum for a while, because other folks tried to bolt the casters directly to the frame, and ended up bending the frames of their $5-7k jointers. Meanwhile, mine is super stable and moves around with ease. So I have been the direct beneficiary of Grant's talent with a cutting torch, and his generosity.

That plate was run on the CNC plasma... I actually meant to ask if that had worked out for you the other day. Glad to hear that it did what it was supposed to.

[Grant H.]

I sell industrial woodworking equipment and I just delivered and installed(Installed by our service techs) this Holz-Her CNC 5' x 12' table to one of my customers. 15 HP router, 10 vertical and 4 horizontal drills and a 12 position tool changer. It's designed to process a 4x8' sheet for cabinet parts...cut to size, bore for hinges, line boring and construction boring the entire sheet in six minutes or less. Edgeband the parts and then assemble. It's good to see the level of interest there is here in CNC machines!

I'm not sure I want to know what something like that costs. Although I really am curious. I almost bought a industrial CNC router at an auction a few years ago, but the size of the thing was ridiculous and it would have required a tremendous amount of work to get running again. Plus 3 phase power, which I can deal with, but it's an annoyance I didn't want to start.


Off to the garage to see what I can get done on the router.

[DFBrews]

Imagine we have a few fans of circa 2015-2019 this old Tony in this thread.

[00tec]

Imagine we have a few fans of circa 2015-2019 this old Tony in this thread.

I have no idea what you're talking about

[bczandm]

I'm not sure I want to know what something like that costs. Although I really am curious. I almost bought a industrial CNC router at an auction a few years ago, but the size of the thing was ridiculous and it would have required a tremendous amount of work to get running again. Plus 3 phase power, which I can deal with, but it's an annoyance I didn't want to start.

This one is made in Germany and is pretty outstanding at what it does. Installed in Denver with Freight, rigging, software, vacuum hold downs and a weeks training is approaching $120,000. I am available to come measure your garage to see if it fits

[Grant H.]

Sort of a short evening on it thus far, but such is life. I may very well end up being out there again later tonight...

I tried using my hand belt sander to trim the nuts, but that was going to be a fight, so I made a quick run to HazardFraught and this janky POS followed me home...
20210103_184732 by ARNEWB, on Flickr

It does work, and it removes metal pretty well, but it walks all over my welding table if I don't have my hands on it, or it clamped.

Using this and a pair of Knipex "channel locks" makes giving each nut a hair cut pretty easy. It seems that ~6-7 seconds on each bevel is enough material removed for these to fit nicely into the extrusion slots.

The belt sits far enough off of the "platen" that the grind certainly isn't flat, but I don't really care for what this is.
20210103_191352 by ARNEWB, on Flickr

It's rather tedious, considering that the two sets of rails that will support the gantry need 64 of these nuts and the gantry will need 50 of these, but whatever. It's making progress possible.
20210103_184946 by ARNEWB, on Flickr

16 nuts per rail. The overhangs are there as I will be adding 1" aluminum plates to cap the extrusions and they will have integral stepper mounts (to be made once the machine is running).
20210103_185358 by ARNEWB, on Flickr

The white space heater doesn't heat anymore, it made it in the recycle bin after I took the pictures...

Rails on the frame, with the bearing blocks and interface plate. I'll get to aligning the rails before I put the gantry risers on, but for now it's nice to see some parts fitting together. The rails are going to get cut down, which will provide the pieces for the Z-Axis as well.
20210103_190400 by ARNEWB, on Flickr

[Grant H.]

Imagine we have a few fans of circa 2015-2019 this old Tony in this thread.

Yeah, ToT is also a great resource for the DIY/Project oriented folks.

This one is made in Germany and is pretty outstanding at what it does. Installed in Denver with Freight, rigging, software, vacuum hold downs and a weeks training is approaching $120,000. I am available to come measure your garage to see if it fits

It doesn't fit. I promise...

[Great-Kazoo]

Sort of a short evening on it thus far, but such is life. I may very well end up being out there again later tonight...

I tried using my hand belt sander to trim the nuts, but that was going to be a fight, so I made a quick run to HazardFraught and this janky POS followed me home...
20210103_184732 by ARNEWB, on Flickr

It does work, and it removes metal pretty well, but it walks all over my welding table if I don't have my hands on it, or it clamped.

Using this and a pair of Knipex "channel locks" makes giving each nut a hair cut pretty easy. It seems that ~6-7 seconds on each bevel is enough material removed for these to fit nicely into the extrusion slots.

The belt sits far enough off of the "platen" that the grind certainly isn't flat, but I don't really care for what this is.
20210103_191352 by ARNEWB, on Flickr

It's rather tedious, considering that the two sets of rails that will support the gantry need 64 of these nuts and the gantry will need 50 of these, but whatever. It's making progress possible.
20210103_184946 by ARNEWB, on Flickr

16 nuts per rail. The overhangs are there as I will be adding 1" aluminum plates to cap the extrusions and they will have integral stepper mounts (to be made once the machine is running).
20210103_185358 by ARNEWB, on Flickr

The white space heater doesn't heat anymore, it made it in the recycle bin after I took the pictures...

Rails on the frame, with the bearing blocks and interface plate. I'll get to aligning the rails before I put the gantry risers on, but for now it's nice to see some parts fitting together. The rails are going to get cut down, which will provide the pieces for the Z-Axis as well.
20210103_190400 by ARNEWB, on Flickr

And here i was, thinking i had a major accomplishment today. Locating the keys to my reloading building.


Then threads like this come along. I feel so marginalized