I have always enjoyed learning new things and thinking about innovative solutions to a wide array of problems I encounter in life.\u00a0 Many of the ideas and subsequent solutions have seemed viable, but would require resources that were not available to me to implement the idea.<\/p>\n
In the back of my mind, I’ve always been intrigued by the thought of having a CNC machine at my disposal. This would help me to bring my ideas to life.\u00a0 Seeing stories of other people building their own low-cost machines tempted me over the years to do the same.<\/p>\n
After years of reading\/dreaming about it and gradually learning, one day I decided to seriously research\u00a0the options.\u00a0 I looked at buying one of the hobby machines that have been popping up on the market in recent years, buying a diy kit, buying plans, or following one of the free open source projects to build my own CNC router.<\/p>\n
In usual\u00a0fashion, I spent a few months studying all of the specs, pricing out each option, and reading hundreds of forum threads, articles, and reviews.\u00a0 It was quickly apparent that I could not afford to buy a machine, or at least a machine that had the performance I required.\u00a0 Kits and open-source machines were not much better for affordability, but plans offered a lot of bang for the buck.<\/p>\n
Quite a few plans were available, so I dug in to comparing them all.\u00a0 In the process, I read many accounts of people who built machines based on the plans, those who modified the plans and those who upgraded their machines after not being satisfied with the initial results.\u00a0 In addition, I happened upon people who designed their own machines altogether, which planted an idea in the back of my mind.<\/p>\n
Once I had gained enough knowledge to evaluate different designs, features, and the resulting performance, I realized that none of the plans would satisfy my needs as-is.\u00a0 However, they could probably be modified to do what I wanted at an acceptable price point.\u00a0 After a lot more\u00a0research (see the trend here?) I got to the point of feeling comfortable looking at any CNC machine, including the commercial models, and evaluating the design decisions and understanding their weaknesses.\u00a0 It was then that I realized I could design my own machine and probably end up with a better product than anything currently available at a given price point.<\/p>\n
To confirm my thoughts, I made up a quick Bill of Materials and researched the prices of all the individual parts and raw materials that would be required.\u00a0 This further cemented the idea\u00a0that I could design and build a machine that would come in at the right cost, and likely with great performance too.<\/p>\n
For the next 3 months, I researched CNC design, studied mechanical engineering, compared products, part manufacturers, parts suppliers, and started formulating a design.\u00a0 I also knew that once I had a working CNC machine, I would have to learn CAD software to create the designs that the machine would produce.\u00a0 I decided to jump in and learn solid modeling to design the CNC machine.\u00a0 I compared all the CAD options and settled on Autodesk\u2019s cloud based Fusion 360 software.\u00a0 It was offered free to hobbyists and small businesses, and has comparable functionality (at least from a beginners view) to the industry standard SolidWorks, which I couldn\u2019t afford.<\/p>\n
In December 2015, I installed Autodesk Fusion 360. \u00a0Through reading the\u00a0educational materials and following the tutorials I was able to quickly learn the software.\u00a0 By the end of the month I had a rough conceptual model of a CNC machine, rendered beautifully and quickly in the cloud by Autodesk\u2019s servers.\u00a0 Over the following 6 months I went through many iterations of the design, gradually refining it and converging on an optimal solution to match my budget and performance requirements.<\/p>\n
Once I felt the design was getting close, I learned to use the Simulation functions in Fusion 360 to perform stress analyses and deformation tests\u00a0in order to find the weak points of my design. \u00a0It was a relief to see that the results of the stress analysis and cutter deflection simulations were in line with\u00a0the calculations I performed during the initial design stages. \u00a0A few more tweaks to\u00a0the frame components yielded a design that should meet the design goals and performance requirements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Intro I have always enjoyed learning new things and thinking about innovative solutions to a wide array of problems I encounter in life.\u00a0 Many of the ideas and subsequent solutions have seemed viable, but would require resources that were not available to me to implement the idea. In the back of my mind, I’ve always […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[6,7],"class_list":["post-1","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wood-cnc-router-build","tag-cnc-router","tag-diy-cnc"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8t9Fx-1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diycncdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diycncdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diycncdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diycncdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diycncdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.diycncdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77,"href":"https:\/\/www.diycncdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions\/77"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diycncdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diycncdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diycncdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}