A few months back, I was really interested in CNC machining. Specifically, I wanted a CNC mill to be able to mill parts out of aluminum. I would soon learn how much of an expensive ask this was. The cheapest options I could find were upwards of $2000 (the 3018 is nowhere near good enough for aluminum), and I didn’t have that kind of money to spend on a hobby. However, this idea persisted with me for the next few months, and here we are today. I decided to build my own custom CNC machine. Not only would this be a ton of fun, but learning how to use a CNC machine could even benefit me in the long run. CNC machining is a very real and very profitable career.
Jumping the gun
I actually began gathering resources for this project a long time ago, all the way back in May. It never went anywhere (obviously), but now that I have more motivation I had a lot of the parts necessary. I had also designed an entire blueprint ready to work with. However, due to time and money constraints, I wasn’t able to work on it.
I used 20/20 aluminum extrusion for most of the build, but I reinforced the frame with steel custom-cut pieces. You may be asking – How did I get these pieces cut?
I convinced the metal shop at my school to plasma-cut me some steel pieces that I could use. This was nowhere near the best solution, but it was really my only option at the time. (plasma cutting is imprecise and expensive)
The price of waiting…
I began assembly on this machine way back in May, but again, didn’t get far. When I came back to this project a few weeks ago, all the steel was rusted and very dirty. I sanded off the rust and cleaned up these pieces before using them in the build. Due to the imprecise nature of plasma cutting and my below-average measuring and cutting skills, these pieces were poorly cut. I had to include a lot of tolerance with the drilling holes in order to work with these pieces.
Progress so far
However, this didn’t stop me from beginning assembly on the machine. As of right now, this is what the machine looks like.
It’s not much, but it’s a good start. I hope to have it done sometime within the next few weeks. However, I have other projects on my radar & with school starting it may be difficult. I’ll be posting updates on this custom CNC machine on my social media & writing update blog posts. However, for the time being I’ll probably be focusing more on school. Stay tuned for updates!
