For almost 10 years I’ve wanted a CNC machine. I found plans on the internet years ago, but didn’t have any money, or the right set of tools at the time to act upon that goal.
A few weeks back, I was surfing Instructables and found instructions for a crude looking CNC based on a moving table design. That rekindled my desire to own a CNC machine.
After a lot of searching, and reading, I came across the FireBall V90 Kit from Probotix. They suckered me in with the $599 base price. In all my research, unless you were doing a crude design, you were going to spend at least 500-600 on parts and materials to build the base system so I figured this was a good price.
Hardware
I ordered my kit with pretty much everything as proposed by Probotix:
- The “best” motor/driver kit
- Anti-backlash X and Y nuts
- RF isolated breakout board
- Large enclosure
- 40V DC linear power supply
- MDF spoil board
- MeshCam Bundle
I wanted to go with the aluminum T-Slot for the spoil board, but figured I could do that upgrade later given that its a $200 upgrade. Turns out, its a good thing I waited, I found some 80/20 T-Slot on Amazon for $13.44 / 48” (~1.22 meters) section.
I will have to cut that into 18” (45.72 cm) sections and either weld them together, or bolt them to a piece of MDF making sure that the top surface is flat. Thankfully, a good friend of mine has all the tools to weld aluminum.
Router Unit
For the spindle (the cutting head) I went with a Wolfgang Engineering TB650. The TB650 is an upgrade over the TB350 which gets very high marks.
For cutting bits, I ordered a variety of bits from Drill Bit City for both hole drilling, and I went with carbide #71 down-cut carbide bits to do the actual milling of the board (cutting out from the stock).
I also ordered some 60 degree “V” bits from Carbide World so I can do PCB trace isolation.
Next time, I’ll detail my software setup.