Building a CNC Router

[Not_A_Llama]

Thank you! I greatly appreciate the offer!

This is going to get 5mm pitch ball screws. I don't trust cog belts enough for the tasks that I am hoping this will be capable of. Rack and Pinion would work as well, but china ball screws are plentiful, and should be good enough to get me to .001" accuracy. Some folks have had success getting to .001", and others have had to replace the ball nuts to get there. It's a learning process either way...

I am actually exploring filling the frame for vibration dampening, which is where epoxy granite really shines, but I haven't gotten there yet. Sand, pea gravel, and even heavy cutting oil are pretty common. Since this thing is already planned to come apart again, I figure I will run some tests and see if I need additional vibration dampening or not.

I appreciate the heads up on aluminum pricing. I will take a look at what they have to offer. I generally just run out to ALRECO in Brighton. All of my .75" blocks for my interface plates are just plate remnants from ALRECO, that are sold pretty inexpensively by the pound.

Maybe some ideas if you haven't seen them.. A lot of dudes will do a sand drain/fill plug setup for the cavities, to make it easier to assemble/disassemble. Some folks also 3D print plugs for the ends of the extrusions. I did some modeling, and I think lead shot in asphalt may be absolute king shit for vibration suppression. If you're not doing aluminum and expecting a high grade surface finish, I'd guess you might not need it for anything other than noise reduction. Naturally, keep that stuff off the gantry to improve your rapids.

ALRECO and K&K is nice for the small remnants, but Xometry has generally better and less beat up remnants boxes for cheap. There's also some dudes on ebay selling Fortnal and 7075 cutoffs. If you're bigger than ~foot by a foot, Midwest will beat ALRECO. Even with shipping. And you'll get new stock. It reflects badly on the local guys.

What are you doing for controller? Servo-wise, Clearpath like you mentioned is really nice. And for spindles, people really love those 2.2kw water cooled spindles on ebay