A smallish highly accurate 3 axis CNC router for PCB routing
Planting the seed
I have wanted to build a CNC Router for some time. After returning to the Hack Factory from a brief hiatus and seeing the router that Pete (otto_pjm) built I was hooked. I had seen many on the web and read just about every website I found on the topic, but seeing his actual working, hand-made CNC router cinched it for me. With the seed planted and no real idea as to where to start, I started collecting parts that, in my mind at least I thought would be useful in building a CNC router, and some actually turned out to be! As much as possible I would build it with donated, scrapped, surplus or otherwise “found” materials. With little real cash to spend, this would also be an exercise in conservation. With two reasonably well stocked surplus stores in the Minneapolis area, I figured this would not be much of a problem.
Design thoughts
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The Table Design
This cnc router, being a moving table design will have a very flat, t-slotted table roughly 14” x 21”. The actual table space in the router is 30” so this full use of the 14×21 inch table size. The t-slots are cut with the same profile as the rockler t-slot material which allows the use of all rockler t-slot attachments and accessories.
Stepper Motors
X Axis Motor
The X axis motor is a TRW Unipolar 1.8 deg/phase, 6v 1.6A/phase 8-wire motor. Its larger and should prove strong enough for the movement of the table along a single axis. I felt the additional strength would be necessary as the table will weigh around 12 pounds
6-Wire
Vexta Unipolar 1.8 deg/phase, 6V .85A/phase
