[snarfy]

This is a great resource. I've been slowly building one over the last couple months and had to learn all of it from various sites. It's nice to have this all in one place.

It's a 1000mmx600mm gantry design I made in fusion 360. I've been mostly copying a commercial design (omio cnc). It uses 20mm aluminum plates, ground rails, and ball screws.

For electronics I'm using a teensy 4.1 based grbl board (grbl-teensy-4) with external stepper drivers, 34mm steppers, and a 500w brushless spindle. I'd go bigger on the spindle but I'm limited by wattage.

The hardest part for me is the hardware. My design is simple based around plates with holes in them, but a couple plates require threaded holes in the end.

If you are a software guy, drilling a 12mm horizontal hole 30mm deep into the edge of a 20mm x 400mm plate is surprisingly difficult. It won't fit in my drill press that's for sure.

[yetihehe]

> If you are a software guy, drilling a 12mm horizontal hole 30mm deep into the edge of a 20mm x 400mm plate is surprisingly difficult. It won't fit in my drill press that's for sure.

Welcome to the wonderful world of jig-making. "Making" jigs has about the same amount of "making" like "coding" in programming. You have to invent or search for a jig which will make that task doable. I suggest clamping lightly two planks to sides of your plate, make a thick block with your desired hole, then screw that block onto planks so that your hole is centered between them. Now you have a guide for drill.

[konjin]

>If you are a software guy, drilling a 12mm horizontal hole 30mm deep into the edge of a 20mm x 400mm plate is surprisingly difficult.

Punch to center the first hole, then a center drill to start, then pilot holes at 3mm, 6mm and 12mm, use duck tape on the drill bit to keep the depth right.

If you really need the holes to be dead straight use a handheld router those are a great thing to have anyway and pretty much all of them have 100mm of or so of travel.

If you're drilling into something very hard skip the 3mm.

A good video on how to tap so you break fewer of them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33wfSMsUbuc

[dekhn]

this is one of the main reasons I bought a CNC- to automate work that I can do precisely, but am too lazy to complete.