My 2x4 CNC

Rincewind said:

i'm jealous...not because of the machine; i'm jealous because i don't have (but want) a workshop

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I just about live out there. About 6 years ago the technology company I worked for pulled out of Louisiana and asked if we would move to Mississippi, Alabama, or Tennessee because they wanted to keep me but this is home and we didn't want to move. Rather than find another technology company to work with for 3-4 years while I was inching closer to getting Social Security we decided that I would just stay here and work while Sandy kept her job in Trust Management. So I help her get out the door every morning and then I have a 20' walk to work in a climate controlled shop.

Up until we both got Covid a year ago (and my broken back) and with all the resulting issues that arose from that I had plenty of work with local contracts, Etsy shop, high-end custom jobs, etc. but theis last year we've had zero income from the shop. The upside is that I have finally begun building things for us rather than for everyone else and my goal is to be building acoustic guitars very soon.

I built the CNC just in time to begin all of this and it has been a valuable asset in the shop - lots of jobs have been on that spoilboard, jobs that I couldn't do before. I thought it would take two years to recoup the expense of building the CNC but it paid for itself in the first six months - amazing! So even if it's small and temporary, go build that shop!!

When we got our 24x24 cnc at my old job ~15 yrs ago it was $2500. The mech guy put it together over the weekend and handed it over on Monday. By mid afternoon on Tuesday (the next day!), it had recouped its direct cost in labor saved on the first couple of batches of parts thru it. I had jobs queued and ready to go. It was like a flood after the dam breaking. Generating gcode from .DXF cad files was almost trivial. The design cycle dropped to as close to zero as possible in both clock time and costs. It let a three-man shop (mech guy, instruments guy, engineer guy) build out machines that sold for over $125k each.

CAD


Finished panel


All panels cnc machined


Motor and encoder bracket two layers of 1/8" black powdercoated alum stacked.

Very nice schematic. Ours wasn't anywhere near that nice.
Our cutter head was a Porter-Cable 693 single speed router. This was designed as a wood cutter, but with slow feed and a single spur, solid carbide, 1/4" cutter, we could cut 6061 aluminum all day. We added a manually controlled lube/coolant mister to the rig and replaced the original plywood spoil board with hdpe.
No fancy electric zero, we just twisted the Z-axis knob until my eyeball said "close 'enuf". Once set, zero was retained as long as power and we always parked at 0,0,1. No limit switches anywhere. 100% motion sim with Mach3 at the desk before submission to cut. 1st run has baby sitter, unattended once validated. Never really crashed it, but occassionally thumped the stepper against the physical stop.
We were only doing thru cutting, so +-.040" on Z didn't really matter. It worked really well. We had the wiring gal able to load/cut/unload just by printing the build drawing at her station.

difalkner said:

And here I am wishing I had a larger shop! My shop is well organized and works well for the type of work I like to do. But on those occasions where I want to build something a little larger, like the media stand we just completed, then we have to carry everything into the kitchen to have room to assemble the unit. My plan is to be back to building acoustic guitars soon so that will present new challenges for staging multiple instruments.

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my current shop is a 29 foot gutted out camper. the machine takes most of the camper/shop width, so i have access on only one side. that's why i am building a bigger shop. i have the platform built, but winter came before i could move the tent garage onto it.
fun part will be moving the very heavy machine from the current camper/shop to the new shop. i have a plan, but it all depends on if my father's and my backs can handle the weight.

so i can currently understand the desire for a bigger shop, though mine is far from organized. spare parts scattered all over the place... i really need to spend some time organizing a bit, but i am always busy with the machine build.

i currently have zero space for project staging. even my fathers shop has very little space, as he has his own projects in progress.