Building my CNC Router

CNC Router Head .

My first cnc router head was the milling attachment from my hobby lathe. It was heavy, but has variable speed and a good sized chuck. This got me started, but as I soon discovered, the spindle speed was too slow for timber routing. My spindle had a maximum speed or 2500RPM, but as I found out after visiting CNCZone.com, I needed a spindle speed 10 times that.

I visited the local hardware store and picked up a plunge router for only $50! Variable speed, cheap with a 1/4 chuck. A bracket was made and the new router put into service. Big improvement.

I wanted to try fine engraving, so modifed a small drill chuck from a dead battery drill to fit the 1/4 router. The drill chuck takes the engraving tps, but as I soon discovered the router itself didnt spin true.

So I visited my local ardware store again and picked up a cheap engraver. I made an adapter to take the engraver, it bolts on next to the routing head. The new adapter also doubles as the vacuume nozzle when I'm not engraving. Unfortunately, I discovered the new engraving tool was also not true, with about 0.25mm wobble.

The moral or the story, dont buy a cheap router heard or engraving tool if you want to do fine machining.

Both the router head and engraver fit side by side, the engraver lower than the router, so I can leave the router attached when I'm using the engraver.

When I'm using the router, I take off the engraver and fit a vacuume pickup to such up all the dust.