My CNC machine

My background

By training, I'm an electronics engineer. However, I've always enjoyed making things. You probably would call me a true DIY-enthusiast.

Wood and my CNC

Since wood is a great material to make things, I built myself a small CNC milling machine. To be honest, I started out a little lazy (or mor midly put 'cautious') and bought one of these cheap Chinese CNC machines. You can see it below.

Alas, they come with horrendously bad stepper drives. Therefore, the first thing I did was build myself a new drive out of the parts of the old drive (the power supply, the emergency button and some of the connectors) and a brand-new Gecko drive. I milled the case myself. I called it Rodin after the famous French sculptor.

Where the old setup continuously missed steps due to a difference in delay in the direction and step signals, the new one works like a charm. It even controls the waterpump of my water cooled spindle and its frequency drive. Combining some relays and the Gecko is really easy. Milling with this setup is a true pleasure.

Cooling my steppers

Even during the milling of the case of my new drive, I experienced that my steppers became really hot. Therefore, I built them a jacket to force some air cooling on them using some small, cheap 24V fans I had lying around. The cooling works great.