In May 2012, the end of my junior year of high school, I began to develop great interest in a personal CNC machine. A CNC machine is a beautiful thing, and the process of homebuilding a CNC machine emcompasses design, building, and utilization. The design demonstrates creativity and planning, building demonstrates an understanding of mechanics and craftsmanship, and utilization restarts the process at design again. A tool to make new things, limited mostly by one’s creativity.
I built this machine for the experience, the usefulness of having a CNC machine, and mainly for isolation routing of printed circuit boards. Research and drawings took about 20 hours, then 30-40 hours in CAD software. The design and majority of features were self-imagined, but I found inspiration for a few key designs on www.cnczone.com. This includes PVC & threaded rod combination to stabilize the gantry, a torsion box base, and delrin for the anti-backlash nut material.
On a tight budget, I couldn’t afford to make mistakes. As you can see, the design is very thorough and includes a tabulation of every part, down to the washer. This kind of detailed planning allows a $1000 machine to be built for $400. The building was the fun part, the large MDF pieces were cut on my high school’s CNC machine, I lathed the couplers, and for the rest, I used a drill press and hand tools.
![cnc_cnc_cut](http://pcbisolation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/cnc_cnc_cut-1024x767.jpg)
![cnc_x_backlash](http://pcbisolation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/cnc_x_backlash-1024x768.jpg)
![cnc_torsion](http://pcbisolation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/cnc_torsion-1024x768.jpg)
![cnc_coupler](http://pcbisolation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/cnc_coupler-1024x768.jpg)
![cnc_x_motor](http://pcbisolation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/cnc_x_motor-1024x768.jpg)
![cnc_y_motor](http://pcbisolation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/cnc_y_motor-768x1024.jpg)
![cnc_z_gantry](http://pcbisolation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/cnc_z_gantry-1024x768.jpg)
![cnc_overall_1](http://pcbisolation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/cnc_overall_1-1024x768.jpg)
![cnc_driver](http://pcbisolation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/cnc_driver-1024x768.jpg)
Currently, this CNC machine is at my college radio station, cutting out speaker molds and engraving parts. This project was easily one of the biggest projects I have undertaken through high school. What I learned about design, planning, the mechanics of big machinery, metalworking, woodworking, control systems, and routing have proved invaluable.