3D Printed CNC Machine

prusaprinters

This was my first attempt on designing and building a 3D Printed CNC Machine that is powered by Nema17 Stepper Motors and 8mm lead screws and controlled by a cheap Arduino based CNC controller. The moving components are based on 25mm hardened steel rods and linear ball bearings. I also tried normal non hardened metal tubes before but the ball bearings just destroyed them.Beside the printed parts you would need a few extra things to build this. Please keep in mind that I never planned to create a full DIY guide to build this thing. I just made this out of curiosity and it worked pretty good. This being said, you might need to tweak a bit here and there, maybe some of the components I used are slightly different than the ones you buy and you need to make it fit.I printed the 3D parts in PLA Plus with 100% infill to make them as strong as possible (you need a few rolls of that). Beside that you need the following things to build the machine:Rods:4x 600mm Steel Rods (25mm in diameter)2x 800mm Steel Rods (25mm in diameter)2x 205mm Steel Rods (12mm in diameter)Bearings:8x 25mm Linear Ball Bearings4x 12mm Linear Ball Bearings6x 608-2RS Skateboard BearingsMotors:4x Nema17 - I went for 65Ncm(92oz.in) holding torque but if you find stronger ones perfect.4x 8mm couplers to connect motors and lead screws3x lead screws 1m (you can easily cut them to length and should have enough for X/Y/Z AxisElectronics (I don't really want to go dow this route but there are great Videos on Youtube on how to build a GRBL CNC Controller based on an Arduino)Arduino Uno (or equivalent)CNC Shild V33 Stepper Drivers (don't go for the cheapest ones here)Enough Cable to extend all the Motor wiresPower Supply4x Limit Switches (Link)Others:1x 30x40mm L-Profile 820mm long3x 30mm Drag Chain (can#t remember what I bought or how long but I bought 3 packages and didn't use all of each package)Board to mount it onAMB 1050 Router with manual speed controlCost:With all the electrical components, Router, Rods, Bearings and Filament, etc. I ended up spending somewhere around 600-700 Euros. But if you buy the components smarter and can wait for them to be delivered in a few weeks, you can get this all done cheaper. WARNING: As mentioned above I created thi project purely for fun and mainly for myself, I can't offer support or troubleshooting or even a guarantee that you'll be successful. If you feel like you need a lot of help figuring out how this all goes together and how to program it, it is probably not a project for you. It would be a shame to make all the investment to have a bunch of stuff that won't work later on. The parts I used are also not the cheapest ones and financially it is probably a bad idea to even build this yourself instead of just buying a Machine from Sainsmart or other vendors.  This being said, I still thought there might be others out there that want to give it a try or just get some inspiration.