DIY CNC Router for Under $900 - Free Plans Available

[Music] [Music] hey guys and welcome to the first build video of my homemade CNC the CNC has a 5 foot by 5 foot torsion box top this will allow a half sheet of plywood to be cut at a time and a maximum material thickness of 6 inches the whole project cost under $900 to make I have free plans to download as well as a cost breakdown spreadsheet with links to all the products that used on my website DIY builds dot CA so without further delay let's get started by building the table which supports the CNC and all the electronics underneath it's go time so here you can see what the shop looks like before and after I made room for the CNC to go the table for the CNC only uses one sheet of 5/8 MDF and one sheet of 3/4 inch plywood I had that sheet of plywood ripped down into smaller pieces at the big-box store that I could then break on the table saw down to four and a half inches next it was off to the miter saw to cut everything down to exact length if you want the exact dimensions yourself you can go to DIY build CA and download a free set of plans the legs are comprised of two pieces but join it together with glue screws and nails to create the upper and lower shelves I first mark out where the boards need to go and attach them temporarily with glue and Brad nails I then come back with 2-inch screws two on each slat [Music] the top of bull shells which is identical is comprised of 5/8 MDF 4 feet by 4 feet each it's attached with a lot of glue a lot of screws and a lot of nails the MDF was not exactly 4 feet by 4 feet so I came back with the flush trim bit to start attaching the legs I first flipped over the top shelf on its top marked out on the legs where I was going to apply glue and then checked everything with a square before firing in a few Brad nails I then came back with four two inch screws on each side of each leg I cut some scrap wood spacers in order to put down the bottom shelf the exact height that I wanted it now getting the shelf up here was very tricky by myself and a bunch of the spacer started falling down so I kind of had enough of that and drove in some Brad nails to keep them in place once the bottom shelf was sitting on all the spacers I lifted up one side at a time applied glue to where the thickness of that shelf was going to be and then dropped it down again I then drove in for 2-inch screws on each side of each leg and that's it for building the table that the CNC sits on I just had to move it off the assembly table without killing myself and getting into the corner now I found out the corner is very uneven so I later shimmed three of the legs the torsion box top is made of three sheets of five foot by five foot 3/4 inch Baltic birch plywood and also a little strip off of a 4x8 sheet of 3/4 inch plywood as there was a little more needed and the rest of that she will be used for the gantry and other parts [Music] so rather than fussing with three pieces and making sure they're all the same I just took all three going in each direction and group them together with a couple screws where I knew it wasn't going to interfere with anything such as the saw blades so what I do is I head over to the chop saw and make sure everything is down to this final length then I'm going to mark everything out and then bring them over to the table saw and notch out the overlaps [Music] so now that everything is notched out and cut to final length I lay everything out and do a quick dry assembly so now that everything worked great in the dry assembly I can take it all apart and put glue and all the joints and I am very generous with my amount of glue here so I start laying glue all over all the top and I'm gonna slap down the 5 by 5 sheet of Baltic birch I'm going to use a square to make sure it's square and adjust all the inner pieces for the right offsets along the sides so now I'm going to mark out exactly where all the ribs are underneath the top sheet of plywood so I can make sure I'm screwing directly into them with a whole bunch of 2-inch screws I then give everything a light sanding just to get rid of any fuzzies or any little burrs that are sticking up then it's time to flip it over and do the exact same thing to the other side this time while checking that everything is aligned in square I can actually use a speed square on the side to reach the top and bottom to make sure that they're parallel with each other [Music] [Applause] [Music] now the last two side pieces I mark in place and cut to length after everything is done because there could be some variances in the thickness of the plywood this ensures that there's a perfect fit [Applause] so the last thing to the torsion box is to add the two pieces of din-rail to either side these are going to be our linear guides for the gantry to install the din rail I'm just using a jig to keep the spacing the same on the top bottom and middle and everything is kept in place with a whole whack of one and a quarter inch washer head screws now this thing ended up weighing close to 200 pounds so if you can find a buddy give him some beer and he should be able to help you so the Gantt rebuild begins like any other part of this was breaking down the stock needed the cut list can be found at DIY build CA so the two larger pieces here are going to be the verticals for the gantry the two smaller pieces are to add thickness and rigidity to the axles on the bearings everything is glued held in place with some Brad nails and then a couple inch and a quarter screws to clamp everything down while the glue sets I can then mark the location of where the bearings are going to be located and bring them over to the drill press and drill them out with a 3/8 inch hole now the 3/8 Forstner bit I was using left a little too much slop in there and I found that the spiral bit was a great fit now to mark the location of the lower bearings I first mark where it's gonna go left and right and then I install temporarily the v-groove bearings and a little piece of rail and I can put another bearing and mark exactly where that hole is going to be to trace out the inside of the bearing with a pencil and then I could line up a Forstner bit to that circle and simply indent the center of where it's got to be drilled out [Music] the v-groove bearings are mounted with a washer on the outside inside and then on the other side where the nuts go there's a washer there and then two nuts one is an eye lock on the outside the other is a regular nut on the inside and a scream Jam nutted together to ensure this never comes apart I then Marco and drill out where the half inch holes are gonna go for the half inch bolts now I found using the half inch Forstner bit this time created a better fit than my half inch spiral bit now in the design I call for cutting off one of the corners and this really should have been done beforehand would have made everything a lot easier but just the same I brought it over to the miter saw did as much as I could finish it up by scoring the veneer and cutting it through with the jigsaw after making sure that the bearings were working properly and the gantry was able to slide back and forth I could then drill out my hole for where the motor is gonna be mounted this hole accommodates the raised circular section on the motor itself then I'm gonna set up a jig with my router to cut out the size square that is required for the stepper motor to seat into this is done because the shaft on the motor is only so long and it really needs to be sunken in to accommodate the pulley that gets mounted after I get the motor sitting properly in there I can use a self centering bit to mark the location of all the holes I then widened these holes out to accommodate a 1032 bolt and a nut on the other side so I couldn't really find any good affordable pulleys for guiding the belt so what I did here is a made a little jig with a hole saw to press down on the outside of a fender washer this is a half inch fender washer so it'll fit on the half inch bolt and it's little bent profile here will allow the belt to just kind of guide itself onto the bearings in between now there's no room for this to actually be jammed nut it on but I am using a half inch nylock nut so it should never come off and now you're about to see what happens when you don't double check your measurements and now you know why there's two extra holes in the gantry so next I need to mark out the height of where the belts are going to be tied off at each end once they were marked off I can bring them over to the table saw stack them all together and cut all of these grooves at the same time to attach these I just use a temporary scrap on top to align it up then I just pin it in place with some Brad nails and come back with four two inch screws just for a little bit of extra reinforcement I cut a little triangle put glue on both sides and tacked it in with some Brad nails one screw should keep it plenty secure now to rotate the unit and get my measurements for the length of the gantry I don't want to go just off the CAD model it's better to measure it in place because there could be a whole bunch of variations at this point I set up a stop block to ensure all four pieces are exactly the same length to assemble the main beam at the gantry everything is held together with glue Brad nails and 2-inch screws I then measure and using an angle grinder cut the din rail to final length as it comes in two meter links a few quick strokes of the file takes off all the birds left by the angle grinder I then clamp a couple of scrap boards up to the side that allows the din rail to be aligned perfectly with the edge this ensures parallelism between the two rails after the two ends are secured I come back with the caliper to check the distances at both ends and in the middle everything is within a couple thousand Drive in all my screws I then cut a few spacers to hold up the gantry exactly where it needs to be placed just after getting this all set up and in place I realized that I needed to actually create and put the z-axis in place before attaching both ends I begin building the z-axis by ripping down four pieces of material one will be the piece that slides up and down two will be thickeners for the bearings to go against and one is the back piece for everything to mount to the two side pieces that act as thickeners for the bearings get glued down tacked in place with some nails and then screwed down to act as a clamp while the glue sets up I can then mark out the position of the top two bearings and center punch a hole then bring them over to the drill press to drill out the 3/8 inch hole [Applause] in order to get the position for the lower bearings I simply bring it over to the gantry top slide on the top and set a loose bearing on the bottom to trace the circle I can then drill out that hole at the drill press after checking the fit on the bearings I can then remove them lay my piece on the table and start assembling the linear guides for movement up and down the z-axis is comprised of two linear guides and an ACME thread in the middle with two pillow blocks on the end this all came as a set for under $50 it also came with two couplers of which I only need one the linear guides are intended to be mounted with some machine screws which I didn't have so I just simply widen the hole a little bit to accept some number-6 wood screws in order to make lining up all the guides easier I'm going to cut a scrap piece of hardboard and hot glue it down to the bearings making sure everything is aligned once all the linear bearings are attached I can slide out the rods one at a time and bring it over and lay it on top of the piece that is actually gonna hold the router this is hot glued in place temporarily will I drill all the holes through the linear guides and attach the number-6 wood screws I then test the fit to make sure everything's sliding freely and straight I can then work on cutting a scrap piece of wood to use as to hold the nut that slides up and down the Acme thread [Music] [Music] there's a little bit of a gap between the brass nut and the bottom of the wood so when I push the Acme thread it out to make the indent I don't want it to sag so that's all that piece is doing I can then line up the Acme thread as straight as possible and smack it with a hammer to leave an indent which I can then drill out on the drill press [Music] [Music] with the Acme thread nut now installed I can do final assembly and tighten up everything once it's looking good and working properly the coupler that comes with the linear kit only has eight millimeter on one end of it so I needed to widen out both ends to accept Eve millimeter diameter I then glued two pieces of wood these are gonna hold the motor for the z-axis movement up and down it needs a large hole drilled out in the top of it exactly where the motor is going to be positioned as there is an indent ring around the stepper motor itself this needs to seat into also in order to tighten the setscrew on the coupler I need to drill a small hole to accept the allen key now that my helper has helped me install the top piece I can use a self centering bit to find the holes and install the motor permanently I don't show it here directly but the coupler is installed there connecting the Acme thread to the motor and using the hole from earlier I Drive in both set screws I then start laying out the piece that's gonna be holding the router in place and using my god awful five dollar hole socket I'd burn my way through two holes I can then bring it over to the bandsaw and finish cutting out the final shape [Music] a slot is then cut in the end to create a spring effect and a hole drilled in the side which will accept a screw later to clamp down on the router and keep it in place I then attach with four two inch screws with the two rings holding the router to a half-inch piece of scrap it doesn't really matter the position is right now as everything will be lined up when it's on the table next we can do final installation of the v-groove bearings which are installed bolt washer beaker bearing washer through the wood washer nut and then lock nut and those lock nut nut or jamb lock together I drove in only one screw on each end to act as a pivot point that way I can twist and change the direction of the z-axis checking with a square against the table after everything measured up square I drove in all the screws in each end in order to hold down the belt on both sides of the gantry I just went with two screws through scrap piece of plywood to clamp down the belt against the end now as it came time to clamp on at the opposite end I made sure to pull down extremely tightly on the belts tensioning them enough to about let's call it an a note I drilled some pocket holes into a few scraps of plywood to act as supports for the drag chain one end of the drag chain is attached to the table and the other is attached to the gantry once the gantry is fully assembled we can then cut a few pieces of wood glue them together and this is gonna be the mounting for the x-axis motor the first thing to do is drill the half-inch hole for the half inch bolt which is going to hold the guide roller bearings / pulleys I then take the assembly over to the gantry and zette axis and fasten it down with four screws I can then remove that assembly in order to drill a 1 inch Forstner bit for clearance for the nut on the back the guide bearing is then installed bolt washer bent outwards two bearings washer bent inwards a smaller washer on the inside on the outside a washer and a lock nut I then put the pulley on the stepper motor and then I line it up with the guide bearing this then gives me a measurement for how thick a standoff I need for the motor [Music] the motor has a raised circular part so I sand off one edge on both the standoffs I place the motor on the standoffs and mark the position of all the holes that need to be drilled for mounting I then temporarily mount the motor with two inch screws which allows for a point to service for in and mark the holes which need to be drilled for some three inch screws to be added after using the mounting holes from earlier I reinstall the screws back into the assembly I can then thread the belt through and test the function of it here you can see exactly how it snakes its way through this using a scrap piece of plywood I set the router at the right position I then drive one screw in from here I can use a square to check the bit and make sure it's totally perpendicular to the table I then drive in the other three screws I then drill a series of holes to open up a slot for the belt to slip through the side on the other side of the gantry the belt simply wraps over the top and is fastened down the same for installing the gantry belts I simply tension it down and screw it down with scrap pieces of plywood to install the drag chain I take a scrap piece of plywood drill a couple pocket holes and then I can attach the drag chain to one end to that making sure that it's totally perpendicular one end of the drag chain is attached to the zet axis the other end is attached to the top of the gantry and doesn't move the last thing to do on the z axis is to install a spacer block and then attach both over tribal limit switches for the Zed axis as you can see the limit switch arm needed some reengineering to activate the last thing to do was to attach the y-axis over travels to the table and the z axis over travels to the z axis so the first thing I do is break down a sheet of 5/8 MDF this is gonna be the wall to separate the unused section of the lower shelf and the controls cabinet which needs to be sealed off for proper air flow the cross members that support the table actually run perpendicular to this piece so I needed to mark out and notch out those areas in order to mount this dividing piece I'm gonna use some scrap plywood drill a bunch of pocket holes in it these will then get glued and nailed on and then screw it in place when the divider is installed as I maneuver this piece into place you can see that I'm using a spacer block to ensure that every section is spaced equally back over at the table so I ripped down another sheet of 5/8 MDF this is going to be used to house the fan that cools the unit now I find the center mark my circle and then using a little trick I learned from John Heise I actually don't need to drill a hole to start my jigsaw I just kind of plunge it in like that [Music] the way I chose to mount this fan is just by taking the stock grill that comes with the fan and attaching it with a bunch of screws on either side of the cage now you see I had to notch out a few areas to make clearance for the inside the outside cage gets mounted in the exact same way just to protect little fingers once the assembly is in place it's just held down with four inch and a quarter screws so the last thing to do was to just take the controller that controls the speed on and off and just kind of mount it to the back wall this will later get plugged into a power strip back over at the table saw I'm going to rip down a few scrap pieces of pine the wider piece of scrap pine is for the thickness of the air filter the smaller piece is just an edge to keep it in place so I'm going to install this piece on the bottom and on the top there's just going to be a piece attached to the torsion box top this will keep the right side free and allow me to slide new filters in and out using some more of that 5/8 MDF I ripped down a small section which is going to be used as the shelf to house all the electronics when cross-cutting to final length I have a small scrap that I cut nearly in half to add as braces for the shelf to attach at both sides of the table this is simply glued and then a few Brad nails hold it in place [Music] [Music] but the shelf now complete I can start laying out all the electronics everything gets simply screwed down to the board making sure to not over tighten anything so in green and black what we see is the four driver boards in blue we see in the middle that's the controller which plugs into the driver boards as well as the computer on the right and gray we have the 24 volt power supply the control board I simply used a bunch of nuts as spacers to stand it up off the bottom as I thought a little bit of airflow underneath couldn't hurt the power supply also received a few spacer blocks just to increase airflow underneath the unit I then temporarily hooked up a cheater cord providing 120 volts to the unit which will then convert it down to 24 volts I use ammeter to verify these results in order to begin wiring these up I first needed to decide which driver boards needed to be x/y the cloned version of Y otherwise known as a and z-axis each of the driver boards needs 24 volts from the supply which I use 16 gauge speaker wire to provide the main control board does not need 24 volts it uses a double-ended male USB to connect and get power from your computer lastly I mounted and tested the relay which is going to control the spindle on/off function all the electronics including the computer are mounted underneath so I need access so I created a door out of lexan using just a hinge and a piece of scrap flexing [Music] [Music] once the lexan was cut to final size I could then lay the hinge where it needs to go and using a self centering bit drill out all the holes I then needed to mark locations for new holes as the old holes were the exact same spot as the ones attached the lexan and this isn't gonna work when the hinges are closed they're gonna interfere with each other so everything needed to be offset the hinge gets attached to the lexan was a simple 8:32 nuts-and-bolts I then whipped up one of my patented trapezoidal handles which I put on all of my shop furniture and attached it to the front with two holes to act as a handle to open and close the door with the door now installed and fully functional I take a scrap piece of plywood rip it down to about an inch and a half wide and the proper length to fit between the Shelf and the top this is going to be used to add a window to the right of the door as the door does not stretch across the entire front [Music] [Music] [Music] in order to power everything I'm going to be using a power bar with a surge arrester and an on/off switch so to get the plug out of the unit I needed to drill a big hole in the bottom to run it outside the power bar was then screwed down so it didn't move using a couple spacer blocks at the same height on both sides I can then drop in the shelf with all the electronics in it once the shelf was seated properly I drove in two screws on either side one into the leg one into the dividing wall a total of six things get plugged into the power bar the fan the computer the computer monitor the 12 volt adapter for the relay coil the 24 volt DC power supply and the power from the router which goes through the relay I then installed four magnet latches all around the door in order to keep the door closed I then bent up and drilled a hole in a scrap piece of aluminum and mounted my II stop push button I then taped together all the cables that needed to go up to the gantry and started fishing them through the upper drag chain I then took a scrap piece of pine and then started drilling some holes through it this is going to be then ripped down and these will be used as clamps to hold all my cables in place [Music] as they attached a clamp on the front of the z-axis and the top part that doesn't move I'm sure to leave a little loop of wire for movement so the cables I ran to each servo are actually a conductor 22 gauge I decided to parallel up my conductors in order to lessen the voltage drop all the connections are soldered and heat shrunk together using my heat gun with his blade worked but it was a pain in the ass so I took it off and decided the traditional way works fine [Music] after the connections were all made I simply pulled the slack back through the drag chain as you can see the wires are just kind of hanging out the back right now and I want them to come through the side of the gantry so using a series of holes and rocking my drill bit back and forth I created a slot for all the cables to pass through after pulling all the cables one at a time through the top I can then start pulling them one at a time through the lower drag chain which will eventually make their way into the control cabinet I made up a few notches out pieces for spacing away and holding the cables in place it drilled a couple holes through the side of the gantry underneath the main beam where the two motor cables were going to come for the y-axis so once everything is clamped in place I added a few pieces of electrical tape to just hold everything together and now you can see under the main beam where those little clamps are that hold the cables in place so in order to all the cables inside the control cabinet I chose to drill a hole through the leg and through the bottom of the drag chain at a certain point to run all the cables inside another dodged out piece clamps all the cables down and some silicone fills in the gaps so the first thing I'm gonna do is get a four inch PVC pipe which I use all over for my dust collection and I'm gonna heat up one end of it as I need this end to butt up nicely against the router and get as close as possible so I'm gonna heat it up and then flatten it with a block of wood on top and a block on bottom just to keep it kind of straight because you can see as I push down without the piece in the middle it actually wants to buckle in on itself so clamping these two pieces together is really gonna give me a nice flat surface the collar on the router sticks down about an inch lower than the mounting bracket for the router so the VSC pipe is one inch longer and I'm going to bring it over to the bandsaw and chop off the one side closest to the router as to increase air flow on that side this PVC pipe is gonna have the hose going in the top and the opening on the bottom to suck so in order to mount this PVC pipe to the z-axis which slides up and down on the top I'm gonna be attaching a piece of wood with a couple screws to the PVC pipe directly on the bottom I'm simply gonna go in and from an angle drive a screw through the PVC pipe into the z-axis the next step is to modify the pipe going over to my miter saw station I'm gonna insert a Y fitting here and branch off over on top of the CNC I simply cut in cut away as much as I need to and then install the Y fitting with some PVC cement I get a lot of questions and concerns about using PVC cement but for me it's not really a big deal because if I ever need to change anything I'll just cut it apart add a coupler and risa meant it again [Music] the PVC pipe will elbow down towards the CNC table somewhere around the middle of the table now I'm going to be running a 4-inch flex hose down from that directly into the pipe now you can see I didn't quite have a long enough hose but a coupler in the middle works just fine with some tape and a little trial run shows just how much suction this thing is going to be capable of [Music] now that the dust collection is complete I need to add a blast gate to turn it on and off so I cut to seven inch square pieces of 5/8 melamine and then I'm going to cut up some hard board strips this is a thin charred board and it's going to be used as the spacer and the slider mechanism as well as some little handles if you're looking for exact dimensions you can go to DIY build CA and look up my dust collector video you can also watch my dust collector video building several of these all in different kinds of configurations [Music] the first step is to use three staples on both sides to attach the guides and using the slider as a spacer between then I'll take the top piece put it on top and drill four holes in each corner being sure to look out for the staples and to make sure I'm drilling through the guide then I'm going to mark out the location of the hole drill a pilot hole and bring it over to the scroll saw and cut it out to final size now I test the fit and it looks good so I can put the slider in put one of the handles on for correct spacing drop the PVC back in place and Mark the inside of the pipe this is going to be the size of the hole for the sliding mechanism now that the hole is cut in the sliding mechanism it's time to glue on the handles onto both sides this just requires a little bit of glue and some light clamping once the glue is dry take off the clamps and test the function of it now if you're a smart you would have installed the Blasket beforehand I am NOT so we're gonna have to retrofit it here so I cut the pipe in half put my two pieces on and using a sharpie I'm going to mark the pipe and the blast gate on both sides to make sure that it lines up correctly with the four holes when I'm done attaching the pipe to either side of the blasts keep both sides of the blasts gape are attached with four screws through the PVC into the melamine before reassembling the blast gate I make sure to put the slider back in place drive the four screws and then it's time to add some silicone around the edges I then cut up a small scrap of wood which is going to be used to trigger against the limits which which we'll install next two small screws are then installed to keep the limit switch in place the wiring is then done off-camera to connect the switch up with the rest of the circuit [Music] so here's the wiring diagram for the CNC machine let's start from left to right on the left here we see the power bar which is going to provide the hundred and twenty volts ac for the entire thing the first thing plugged into it is some flying leads which go over to our 24 volt DC power supply this power supply feeds the 24 volts on each of the driver boards for the stepper motors as you can see it's wired up line neutral and ground your black white and green wires respectively so all you need to do on the output side is hook up a wire from 24 volts follow it to the 24 volts on the driver board and daisy chain it between it the common same thing over to the common and daisy chain it down to each board the next thing plugged in is just the power for the pc my pc is an old dell and the reason for this is it can be a dedicated computer and it also has a parallel part on the back which is how the five axis CNC breakout board is operated through a parallel port you can get other boards that are operated through USB this is what I went with the PC has two cables coming out of it the parallel cable which is plugged into the parallel port on the breakout board and the back of the motherboard on the PC and a USB a male-to-male cable which provides five volts to the board next up we have simply plugged in the PC monitor after that we have the cooling fan this is that big fan in combination with my filter on the other side that allows clean air to circulate and keep the driver boards nice and cool next up we have an ungrounded plug the reason it's ungrounded is the router is a double insulated tool so it doesn't have a ground so we're simply going into a 40 amp contactor with our line and neutral our line is going to be disconnected by the contactor and closed when we tell the coil to energize the neutral is never broken next up we have plugged in as a 12-volt power adapter which feeds 12 volts through our normally open contact on the breakout board and the common provides power back through the coil completing the circuit energizing a coil and turning our router on this is done within the mock software to control this relay so the next thing is our five axis CNC board to see our parallel port our five volt supply our B axis which is not used because this is only a 4 axis machine no need for the fifth axis we have our spindle relay again so down here we have all of our safety inputs number five is not used one two and three our x y&z axis limit switches which are all normally closed and then we have our e stop and input 4 which is also normally closed this is done for safety if a wire ever breaks there's no way to shut it off safety circuits are always normally closed so next up we have simply just all of our connection points for our four accesses we have the x axis the y axis the z axis and the ay axis as you can see over here the ay axis is actually a cloned version of the y axis so we have two y axises and X and a Zed the breakout board is connected to each one of the driver boards via a ribbon cable it can also be individually wired to terminal if you so choose so the driver boards again have 24 volts going to them for power the common for the 24 volts and then we just match up our step durand in 5 volts between the breakout board and the driver board on the right we have the B plus B minus a plus and a minus this is simply connected up to our stepper motors with a 4 pair 22 gauge shielded cable the shield goes back to ground and you can see the symbol here is 4 twisted pair so we have 2 twisted pairs in this cable it doesn't matter we just need a shielded cable that connects up to the leads on her stepper motors now our my stepper motors the B+ was red the B - was blue the A+ was black and the A - was green this may be different for you do not mess up this connection and this connection is simply made between the flying leads and my cable with solder and some heat-shrink and that's pretty much it all you do is just match everything up on the driver board between the motor and the breakout board and everything over here is your power circuits ok guys so this is the mach 3 software that's gonna run the cnc so we need to do a bunch of setup before we even start so let's go up to config let's stay select native units and we're gonna select inches it's already selected next we're gonna go back up to config and we're going to go to ports and pins so everything here is pretty much ok so next we're going to go over to motor outputs and we're going to enable our a axis then we're gonna change both of these columns to match what we have on our parallel port connector so next we're going to configure the input signals we're going to turn on the X plus negative Y plus and negative Zed plus negative and then we're gonna set the pin numbers 10 and 11 11 12 12 okay and then we're gonna scroll down until we see our East op you stop is set we need it to be pin 13 all right then we're gonna go over to output signals and we're going to set enable one pin number one and then we're going to enable output one and that's going to be active low so it'll turn on when it's zero and pin 14 will control it next we'll go over to our encoders everything's fine there then our spindle setup everything's fine there mill options everything is fine there as well and we'll hit apply ok so now we need to go back into our config and we need to start tuning the motors now this is what's gonna tell it how many steps per inch so you're just gonna have to tune your motor with what pulleys you have what motors you have and adjust this you're gonna have to keep measuring and readjusting so for mine it was 1131 steps per inch and I want my velocity to be 200 acceleration 20 we're gonna change this to three and three and we'll hit save access settings and we do the same thing for the y-axis save access settings and the same thing for the a axis because the a axis is a clone of the y axis and now we're gonna go to the Zed axis which is a little bit different because we're using that ball screw or acne thread assembly instead of the belts so the steps are actually going to be one zero one three four and the speed will be 40 acceleration will be two three three save settings okay all done next we're gonna go into general config and everything looks like it's setup okay already okay so let's go back into config we don't care about hotkeys homing limits our tool path so we're gonna go on a slave axis this is where we're gonna set up our a axis to be a clone of what the y-axis is so we'll go y-axis slave it axis a the other ones are set to none there we go and that's pretty much it for setting up your Mach 3 software so now that everything's configured all I have to do is attach my stalk to where I need it make sure that these screws that are holding it down because I don't use any clamps or anything make sure these screws aren't gonna be hit at any point with the bit and then I can bring it over to its origin point with the arrow keys and then I can lower the z-axis with page down so now that I've moved the router to the origin point all that's left to do is load our G code and hit start [Music] [Music] you

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Keywords: DIY Builds, Build, DIY, Builds, Woodworking, how to, wood, working, make, custom, simple, easy, basic, best, lumber, pine, oak, stain, spray, brush, nail, screw, quick, cheap, cnc, computer numeric control, cnc table, homemade cnc, homemade, home made, diy cnc, custom cnc, cheap cnc, cost, router, cnc couter, diy cnc router, servo, stepper, motor, servo motor, arduino, stepper motor, nema 17, nema 23, torsion box, Z AXIS, AXIS, VERTICAL, MOVEMENT, board, controller, breakout, jumper, shielded, driver

Id: jjdXpp77MdU

Length: 55min 48sec (3348 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 11 2018