CNC Router

Rollerskate bearings riding on iron pipe, driven by screws and toothed gumbands.

I’m not really sure why I built this router.  At the time I had no immediate need for it.  I think  it was my dad’s fault. He was a master engineer/hacker/builder/pennypincher. After he died I inherited quite a few boxes of his tools, parts, uncompleted projects, junk, and memories, and it was when I kept trying to thin out these boxes, that I kept running across a few assorted little stepper motors.

At the time I was cutting out guitar bodies on the bandsaw, and knew other people who were using CNC routers to cut out Telecaster bodies and though that was pretty cool.  I knew nothing about CNC, but started hanging out on the CNC Zone Forum learning about this stuff.  After a while I invested $60 in a stepper control board, and decided if I could get down the process of drawing a simple circle in a CAD app, turning the circle into a list of coordinates, and then watch the motors move to those numbers, I’d start building the router.  I thought it would be smarter than building the machine first then finding I was too dimwitted to get anything to move-lol. So in the past year I’ve only cut one guitar with it, but I have cut plenty of airplane parts, do-dads, geegaws, and thingamajigs with it.
Here’s some pics od it in progress and a video cutting stiffer spindle mounts.

Including PC and software, the whole thing probably cost me around $700 and a couple months to build. The router plans are at http://www.solsylva.com .  The controller is a $60 Toshiba tb6560 from ebay.  The major costs were 1/2″ Acme dual thread  and the Acme zero-lash nuts from http://www.dumpstercnc.com and the stepper motors from http://www.hobbycnc.com .