This post is part of the cnc series.
After 2 months of waiting - my CNC router arrives. 8 weeks lead time they said - 7 weeks and 4 days it was ! Who are they ? TanieCNC people [CheapCNC in Polish :]. Although it may look like they don’t know how to make websites AND their name does not instill a lot of confidence - but hey, they certainly know how to weld and make precise machinery ! The size of the package caught me off guard, I’ve spent an hour disassembling the crate in full sun. After that I wasn’t able to get it through the stairs myself, fortunately a friendly neighbour gave me their pair of hands. Lifting the machine by 2 people is okay, it’s still not lightweight, but bearable. Putting it on the table was a different affair entirely. Careful not to damage anything, especially the motor assemblies - we’ve put it on a impromptu wood ramp. Using heavy duty straps, we’ve lifted it up little by little. Then some inspection - the quality is really superb, especially of the metal frame ! After that I got an old PC with Windows XP and parallel port running Mach3 software - I wanted to set it up as in any other shop at start. Later on I’m planning on moving to LinuxCNC and then gradually off parallel port on to a USB stack, something more like an arduino parsing gcode and driving motors instead of relying of the accurate timing of the PC. TODOs:
- add an MDF bed layer on top of existing bed
- get better clamps
- get more router bits
- get a vacuum attachment for the spindle
- move to LinuxCNC
