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These days, homebrew CNC machines seem to be losing popularity to 3d printers. These are all well and good, however there are situations where you really need a part made of solid metal or wood, and for those there is no substitute to a good ol' CNC machine. So, it's nice to see that Jonny D is making progress on his homebrew CNC router. After getting a sweet deal on a suitable mechanical frame and stepper motors, he has managed to get his version up and running, and has successfully used it to engrave wood and drill PCBs. He's still working on improving the system, however this early success should be a great motivator to get everything finished up. Excellent work!
"loosing popularity" - that's painful.
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"CNC machines seem to be losing popularity to 3d printers"
3D printers ARE cnc machines.
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Sure, if you want to be pedantic, however I didn't think anyone referred to them this way. Perhaps a more proper way to say this would be 'CNC machining devices seem to be losing popularity to the recent crop of additive rapid prototyping machines'?
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On this site perhaps - the makerbot and all, however right now if you want to make something useful that's over a few inches in size and not wait a year - I'll go with my cnc router.
Subtractive techniques are currently orders of magnitudes faster. Yes additive is fun to play with, heck I thought about building a reprap or makerbot for fun, but really I can't justify it right now.
My cnc router pays for itself, I don't see that happening for the near future with the "printers". I'm open to anyone who can tell me how they're making money with their makerbot (and factoring in their time, which I can do using my good old subtractive tech. cnc.)
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I mean popularity in terms of buzz, I'm still pining for a nice desktop CNC machine that I can use to shape aluminum parts with.
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