Manufactory – CNC Router Table
Well, there it is. An actual functioning CNC router table.
Being one to invent random words, I came up with “manufatory”, to mean “manufacturing at the speed of thought. What am I trying to get at? In general, I’m on a crusade for tequity, having an equity share in technology, for intergenerational wealth creation. Whether it be owning stocks in a company, or patents, or other artifacts, being able to ride the rising tide of tech wealth requires owning a piece of it, and not just being a consumer of tech.
So, what’s this manufactory business about? Software production is one kind of intellectual property, but not all things are software. Everything we interact with in the world was created by someone, or some machine, somewhere in the world. Being able to think up a design, produce the goods economically, and sell them into open markets, is tequity.
A couple blogs back (Embodied AI – Software seeking hardware) I mentioned three machines,
3D printer
CNC router
Robot arm
There are myriad machines that are used to manufacture goods of all kinds. I am choosing to focus on these three forms because they are immediately approachable, relatively inexpensive, easy to build, and can be used to both create immediately useful and sellable goods, as well as create the parts necessary to build more and different machines.
The machine I built is the Lowrider CNC 3, by V1 Engineering. This machine is very simple, primarily able to cut sheet goods, with an emphasis on full sheets (8’x4′) of plywood, MDF, and the like. This is NOT the machine you’re going to use to cut an engine block out of a billet of aluminum. There are many ways to get started on this one. There are a number of parts that are 3D printed. It also uses ‘rails’, which are nothing more than tubing you can buy at any hardware store (electrical conduit tubing). There are bits and bobs of hardware (screws, nuts, bolts, timing belts, motors, electrical board, linear rails) which you can source yourself, or you can just buy the hardware kit, for $306 USD. For this first one, I purchased the hardware kit, and printed all the necessary parts myself. Save a little money on printing, at the expense of spending a fair amount of time doing it. After gaining experience with the first one, I’ve embarked on building a second one.
Same machine, sample printed parts, this time in PETG instead of PLA for some of them. I’d say the printed parts cost roughly $50 in plastic, and a couple days of printing, depending on what kind of machine you have. Mostly I print on my prusa mini+, because it’s relatively fast. The larger part I had to print on the larger Prusa MK3, because it is too big for the mini.
Once you’ve got all your printed parts, and hardware kit, you’re ready to assemble. The instructions are very easy, and step by step. You don’t need really fancy tools. A screwdriver, couple of socket wrenches, and that’s about it. Following the instructions, I was able to assemble in about 3 days of casual time. This could easily go together within a few hours in a single day, assuming you’re well organized with your tools and a nice workspace.
Alright then, you’ve got a basic machine. Next up are the electronics.
This is the jackpot board. It was designed specifically to be a low cost brain for various kinds of CNC machines. In this case, we’re doing a large format CNC router table, but it can also run a laser cutter, or any kind of machine with up to six motors. It’s all you need when you’ve got small motors (up to nema 17 realistically). It has the motor drivers onboard, and a ESP 32 compute module is the heart of its intelligence.