It’s small… it’s not particularly powerful… But it’ll do small 3D reliefs deeper and easier than the GF can. And more importantly, with a little effort and luck (or a few cheap upgrades) it can mill aluminum. Should be able to add some extra little touches to GF projects now that I couldn’t do strictly with the GF.
It is, btw, a 3018 CNC. All lead screws and linear bearings, no belts. So many companies make these kits now that they are ridiculously cheap. This one was 250 dollars shipped from amazon. Another 50 dollars added some more bits.
Yeah if you order one of the more expensive kits (~350 or so) some of them actually come with a 5W laser as well. The control boards have a connector on them for it and the spindle holder actually has 4 little notches for putting the laser in the spindle’s place. Wasn’t really interested in adding a diode laser to a bed so small though.
All this really needs is a little bit more aluminum to sturdy things up a bit and maybe upgrade the spindle to a 20k rpm vs the included 10k rpm to do some reasonably accurage aluminum milling without fighting with it.
Can you tell me what operating system you are using; what if any, new software you had to install? I’m looking at a refurbished Win10 Home (not S) laptop that would be dedicated to the CNC, nothing else. I can use Windows, but I’m not a guru on programming or electronics.
It looks like the CNC machine has to be plugged in to the computer, so I have that right?
I haven’t actually made it that far yet. But design-wise I will probably use Easel which is browser based so should work on mac, linux or windows. I am familiar with Fusion360 as well so might use that on my Windows 10 machine. The controller you see attached to it allows you to use it standalone as it has an SD card slot. So you just drop the gcode files on memory card and can load them up from there. But I will PROBABLY, if I hook it up to a computer, use one of my Raspberry Pi (or clones) running linux to control it as it has a lot more versatility than that little offline controller does.
Going to try it without first. Depends on just how much of a mess it makes. I will have a shop vac close by to vacuum up dust as it collects to start. If I have to, I’ll build an enclosure later.
