Rather than purchasing a router mount, I cut one from 3/4″ MDF and hopefully will cut an aluminum one later on. If anything, cutting these will get you up and running until you have the money for a purchased one.
Attached is the DXF for the Porter Cable 690 router mount I made for my CNC router. You will need 2 pair of these to mount your router.
A few people have asked me for the drawings of my router so here you go. These are the basic drawings and I have a more in-depth drawing I will post at a later date.
One of the drawings is an overall drawing showing the dimensions of the 80/20 extrusions, flatbar, and ACME screw. The other drawing is a flatbar detail showing the hole locations.
I was looking for a pendant to remotely control the CNC and found a few that were too expensive for me, such as the MP-02 MPG Pendant from Homann Designs, and some not so expensive, such as the ShuttlePro and ShuttleXpress from Contour Design. In the end I picked the Xbox. One, it was relatively cheap, and too, well it did everything I need it to do, such as move my X, Y, & Z axis, as well as have buttons for cycle start, emergency stop, fast jog, a button for macros, etc. In other words, it really does everything a pendent should do.
I downloaded the plugin from the Mach3 plugin site: Xbox 360 Controller LINK
installation was rather easy and as you can see in the vid below, it works great. By the way, a few have asked why I chose the wired instead of a wireless controller. I’ve heard mixed stories about the batteries not lasting long, and also having to restart the controller if the computer falls asleep.
With the wired, I have several feet to walk around, and right now I do carry it while I’m in the testing mode and the emergency stop has saved my a couple of times. I’ve been trying a few g-code samples, and I do not have the limit switches attached yet, so if I didn’t hit the emergency button, the linear carriages would have went off of the cold rolled steel flatbar.
Here is a great link showing the assembly of the 2′ x 3′ CNC router from Fine Line Automation. It is by a fellow that goes by the name jpz over at Overclock.net:
These are great vids of fellow CNC’er from CNCZone assembling his Fine Line Automation FLA-100. Even thought FLA posted the Solidworks Edrawings, it is not the easiest method to figure out how to put it together. My CNC is highly based on the FLA-100 rev 4, with the exception that mine is 1/2″ wider, therefore I’ll be using the vids to help me assemble it.
Fine Line Automation FLA-100 Build Part 1
Fine Line Automation FLA-100 Build Part 2
For some time I’ve been wanting to build a CNC router, but the cost was out of reach. There were also so many different plans out there, I wasn’t sure which one I wanted to build. I bought the RockCliff and Solsylva CNC router plans, but after some thought, I decided to go a different route.
Since I live about 10 minutes from the lake, humidly is a major problem. Many of my tools have rusted, such as crescent wrenches, files, and the column on my drill press. I started thinking that making a CNC router out of MDF might not be the best idea because I’ll run into problems later on as far as swelling goes.
I decided that a metal based CNC would be the way to go, but since I don’t own a welder, that limited me on what I could build. After Googling “DIY CNC” and other search terms, I found some builds using parts from www.cncrouterparts.com
These machines were built mainly from 80/20 aluminum extrusions. I have a miter saw, and with the right blade, I can cut the extrusions to size and there will be no welding involved.
Fast forward to now.
I purchased a 3-axis electronics kit from www.finelineautomation.com
After some help from the CNC Zone Forum www.cnczone.com/forums/index.php, I now have my electronics basically wired:
The next vid shows the E-Stop testing:
Now this is a pretty cool parrot, he rocks!
There is a free program called Desk Engrave that will convert any text into a DXF or gcode. The gcode doesn’t interest me, but since I have AutoCAD or other programs that can read DXFs, I am able to open that up and use it to cut lettters on the scroll saw.
This is Steve’s video on what he does when he’s done with a scroll saw project.
After dipping it in it, and it completely dries (in about 3 hours), he seals it with a spray lacquer.
By the way, the oils he uses is Formby’s Lemon Oil Treatment
and Weiman Lemon Oil
