Hi Dave,
I really do wish you well on this project, I had seen some your designs from
a couple of years ago and they were well thought out. I have put aside my
$500 just in case....I don't mind taking advantage of a dedicated underpaid
hobbyist who comes up with a great design.
I AM looking for a real light duty machine to mostly drill pcbs and figure
it would cost me that much to "roll my own". I was looking at using the 8020
profiles for the rail, like Chris did.
How about a few design specs to whet our appetites? Work area size? Type of
rail, material, etc. Nothing etched in stone but something to give us an
idea of what you are talking about. Just to put things in perspective.
The $10 stepper motors is one indication of size, unless you got a real deal
somewhere.
The question is where does it fall between the british cnc ($300) and the
MaxNC ($1000).
Mycroft Holmes
On 12/19/06, Dave Mucha <dave_mucha@...> wrote:
> --- In Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com <Homebrew_PCBs%40yahoogroups.com>,
> "Kevin Morgan" <prizes@...> wrote:
> >
> > Guys,
> >
> > I do think a DIY CNC kit for under $500 is certainly possible. I
> > think I have under $300 in materials in my home built setup,
> > including stepper motors and DIY controllers. It is similar to the
> > ones that John Kleinbauer sells plans for.
> >
> > I haven't seen anything like that so far though.
> >
> > Kevin
>
> To point out the costs, you can make a frame for under $50 and put in
> rails of some sort or anther for, maybe $50 to $75. motors for $30 ?
> a hobbyCNC driver kit for $80 and a power supply for maybe $100.00.
> Figure in the neighborhood of $50 to $75 for all the shipping from
> each of the suppliers. $5 here and $10 there adds up quickly.
>
> Add wires and switches and all that and you are in the $450 range if
> you can get the parts. if you have to spend more, the price goes up,
> if you have a well stocked surplus bin, the price goes down.
>
> We figure that with our time and such, we need to make some sort of
> profit. I'd like to make about $10,000 on each machine, but alas, we
> are not selling golden machines.
>
> We figure it will take a few days to make a machine for us. a couple
> weeks if you design and build your own.
>
> So, we came up with a target price that was only a couple hundred more
> than the cost of what you could scrape things together for.
>
> I did offer a group buy for the SLA7078mpr chips on another list. it
> looks like they would be about $6.80 per, and $4.05 for Priority mail
> or $24.40 for three. I need to order 144 to meet the minimum order,
> and once this is done, I would either sell them for $8 ea or just use
> them for the new machines.
>
> There is it. we are doing this in the basement and garage. we do
> not have a shop or factory, so we do expect some things to change. We
> also do not have a ton of start-up money, so we are doing it on the cheap.
>
> I figure all of you have or are doing your stuff in a similar way at
> some point.
>
> Thanks for listening.
>
> Dave
>
>
>
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