Heavy Duty CNC Router Build - How We Built it for Commercial Duty! 

A great summary. Thanks for this. In my last job I was coding for a £125k industrial 5-axis wood CNC (seriously heavy duty) and I'm turned off by all of the lightweight hobbyist machines you can buy, so I'm considering building something a bit beefier like your machine. This gives me tons of great info.

This is somewhat around what I plan to build myself. I've been binge watching youtube videos for like two past weeks and this is hands down exactly the info I missed in most of the other build vids. Thanks man, really appreciate the effort to say about it. You showed me yours, I'll show you mine. Soon ;) Cheers and good luck

There will always be well-meaning (or not) people pointing out perceived issues. In short, if it does what you want, which in this case is to make money - end of story. It works for you, and as they say, "Perfect is the enemy of 'good enough' " Could it be made better (squishy definition of what that is), sure it can, but that never ends, and you didn't make it to please everyone. Well done, sir, carry on.

Wow, that is a long screw, most would have used rack & pinion for that length. Good job

Thanks for posting this awesome video! I appreciated you mentioning the size of the screws you are using as I am building a machine similar to this and appreciated the info!

awesome info thanks!

Good job on the build. My Nema 34's don't make anything like the noise your's make. Have you thought about mounting it on isolation bushings? There really isn't anything wrong with rack & pinion systems, there are plenty of solutions to backlash. Whip on the screw rails is pretty predictable.

❤❤❤❤ All of a sudden I understand why men use emojys as comments.

Stumbled across your vid today while researching, very nice build. As you were explaining the electrics my heart had some palpitations, hopefully for no reason since I’m watching on my phone and could be mistaken. From box one (AC side) to box two (Power Supplies), did I see wires running without knockout protection? I saw the bundle of DC in box three had a knockout protector so I’m hoping I’m just not seeing it right. Vibration on this machine would make short (no pun intended) work of that wirings insulation if there’s no knockout protection. Again, thanks for posting.

This is one of the beefiest ones i've seen, very well built! I like that you choose the ball screw spindles instead of racks. I am currently building a cnc router with the same setup (steel frame, all ball screw spindle) but about halve the size of this one. Definitely will be looking into a Bosch router after seeing this. Yours would mill steel with adjusted feed rate. Also nice to see someone actually shimming the rail and make sure it's square. Most of the flimsy (aluminium) things you see passing by are crooked or have a lot of flex in them. Very nice build, it deserves way more attention on youtube!!!

Big cnc machines are scary when in motion

I watched a video recently where the stepper motors hummed at low rpm. (I wish I could recall the video) The creator pointed out that the controller was at the lower end of the motor specs in terms of wattage. He went on to show the same motor with a higher wattage controller and the noise was absent. Curious as to where your controller falls into the motor specs?

Your table is similar to mine. I built mine years ago and all steel also. Mine is plasma and a 2.2 kw water cool spindle. I have a third of it with aluminum table with t-slots, I can also add 4 risers for full sheet cutting. Oh the aluminum table comes off too with just 4 bolts. I installed rack and pinion but it skipped a lot so I bought 1 inch ballscrews and with my 1200 oz steppers it was so painfully slow I had to put the r &p back in action but I flipped it and use a pressure strut to hold the rack and pinion together better but still want to do the ball screws, they are still on table but will only take 15 minutes to get back together. Can you let me know what setting you used for your dual steppers? I use mach3 and also have a slave but mine is y axis. Any ideas would be great. I can post pictures if you want to see what it is like. Ed

excellent work! any guess on overall cost? Does it cut steel like you wanted?

Hi mate, excellent built. I am about to start my build in a couple of weeks and will definitely fit a smooth stepper. Still doing research.😁🇿🇦🇦🇺🇬🇪🇷🇺🇷🇺🇷🇺🇷🇺

Thanks for sharing your machine it is perfectly fabricated and well explained. How much did it cost you please confirm

Yo. Put some of that epoxy sand under the rails so they aren't floating between the shims. stiffness^^^^^

Hey, congrats for your hard work ! I may have a few thoughts I would like to share with you about your build and I do not really know how to do it without sounding like a criticism, which would be far from my intentions. There are good and less than good things about this build: a) on the one hand, you made a sturdier machine than the aluminium ones, because steel is obviously stronger than aluminium; b) on the other hand, your expectations about milling metals on it with decent results might be a bit too ambitious. The thing is that the thickness, the length and the width of each steel profile you used, do not match the lenght , the width and the hight of the entire machine. I can tell from the outset that you had in mind to make a much better machine than the flimsy long aluminium frame ones, which you have. But ideally, you should have had in mind the industrial grade portal machines, to compare your machine to, only as a frame of reference. I know, it would have resulted in a much, much heavier machine and the budget would have had to be different. The puzzle with this machine is that you are "stuck" in between two worlds: a more capable machine than most diy aluminium frame routers, but still a far cry from a solid industrial design, which would allow to cut metals decently, quality wise. I wouldn't upgrade to servos, because the speed/torque capability you would gain could not be decently sustained by , and taken advantage of by, the frame of your machine. The gantry would have to be AT LEAST double in size , which would increase its mass accordingly, which would make the table's frame life soooo miserable ! A stiffer gantry at that hight would require a much better second moment of inertia , which would call for much wider and thicker steel profile . Even so, it is not the bending of the gantry that one should worry about too much, but the torsion of it. The torsion of the gantry varies on how far out the Z axis would be relative to the X axis of the gantry, and on how deep the Z axis is lowered to mill the work. The outer the spindle relative to the X axis of the gantry, the harder the "mission" of the gantry as to not to rotate around the X axis. On the other hand, the more distance from the X axis of the gantry to the table, the more torque applied to the gantry. The gantry should have at least 20 inches in width, 20 inches in height and at least 1/2 inches in thickness. With these dimensions, the gantry would be able to easily sustain a 200 pound Z axis, milling at a distance of 20 inches away from its axis (so 10 inches beneath the gantry), using a 200 N cutting force, with an acceleration of 0,5 m/s^2, AND, very important, all of the above with a vertical displacement of the endmill caused by the torsion of the gantry of less than 4 thousands of an inch (the rotation of the gantry around X axis caused by torsion, would cause the (vertical) Z axis to rotate by an angle that would translate liniarly on the Y direction by less than 4 thousands of an inch lenghtwise). That would be a decent enough lack of accuracy to mill metals. But again, that increase in the gantry mass would imply an increase in the table frame, which would be a nightmare from a fabrication point of view. If I were you, I would leave it like that and I would use the router for milling wood and plastic, and perhaps aluminium with not necessarily utmost accuracy. Which is great anyway. I would like to reiterate that I meant no criticism; you have done a great job !

How did you assemble the frame so it was on plane? I don't mean the spoil board, I mean making the frame level and flat so it's not say potato chip shaped if that's helps clarify my question. I know it's possible to have the guides/rails parallel on one axis but not on the other, or say parallel in a north south direction but sag in the middle etc. I'm working on building a 1500mmx2200mm machine on a tight budget (I've got about 80% of the parts so I'm close to starting actual assembly) but I can't seem to find much on DIY "planing" (for lack of a better word) of the frame. Do far the 2 affordable options for large machines is use a laser level and accept those limitations, or building a tray that connects both sides and using self leveling epoxy that you get one shot to get right and complicates drilling and tapping the mounting holes. Thanks for sharing the video.

Why is you gantry so tall? Question being something like it only needs to be as tall as the biggest thing you mill. What are you milling which is so tall?

Hi mate, if you used reduction drives on your motors it might have solved the overheating problem. It is a lot of weight that you are moving around all the time. Just a thought.I would definitely go for a much lighter gantry in using aluminium than steel.🇿🇦🇦🇺🇬🇪🇷🇺🇷🇺🇷🇺🇷🇺

Can i hit the subscribe button, Please?

open loop motors? you are kidding right? it is like making a Lamborghini and putting a motor from chinese scooter. if there is some error in the positioning you aren't going to catch it and the whole work will go to trash can. you wasted a good steel design.