As for any project first thing to make are design considerations. They are what actually makes your project look this way or another. There are quite a few things to consider.
For the first thing I had to decide was the actual porpose of this machine. the answer is that I want to be able to machine enclosures for my electronic devices. There are also plans for machining some letters in acrylic, maybe some decoratice thingies. I would also try to mill PCB's, but that's not mandatory, because I have etching process using toner transfer method figured out quite nice and I don't really need such functionality. Of course is would also be nice to have.
I would like to machine pieces of roughly A3 paper sheet size. Precision the higher the better but I guess that 0.5 mm would be nice and 0.1mm will be awesome.
As for materials machined I'd definitely like to be able to machine wood and it's derivatives (eg. MDF, plywood). these are in most cases quite easy to machine. Second group are different types of synthetic and plastic materials like polyethylene, acryllic, PET, PCV and so on. Since these materials can be usually cut with simple box cutter i guess in this case it's more about precision and repeatability. I would also like to attepmt milling in aluminum (probably soft alloys of it). I'm not expecting huge success or speed because milling any metal needs quite expensive tools. Welll if I'll be able to make a simple photo frame out of aluminum even if it takes 10 hours I will be happy. Milling pcb's will be hard. That is not because fiberglass is hard to machine (which it is not) but because of precision needed. I guess I'll be happy If i'm able to make traces down to 0.025'' reliably.
For the first thing I had to decide was the actual porpose of this machine. the answer is that I want to be able to machine enclosures for my electronic devices. There are also plans for machining some letters in acrylic, maybe some decoratice thingies. I would also try to mill PCB's, but that's not mandatory, because I have etching process using toner transfer method figured out quite nice and I don't really need such functionality. Of course is would also be nice to have.
I would like to machine pieces of roughly A3 paper sheet size. Precision the higher the better but I guess that 0.5 mm would be nice and 0.1mm will be awesome.
As for materials machined I'd definitely like to be able to machine wood and it's derivatives (eg. MDF, plywood). these are in most cases quite easy to machine. Second group are different types of synthetic and plastic materials like polyethylene, acryllic, PET, PCV and so on. Since these materials can be usually cut with simple box cutter i guess in this case it's more about precision and repeatability. I would also like to attepmt milling in aluminum (probably soft alloys of it). I'm not expecting huge success or speed because milling any metal needs quite expensive tools. Welll if I'll be able to make a simple photo frame out of aluminum even if it takes 10 hours I will be happy. Milling pcb's will be hard. That is not because fiberglass is hard to machine (which it is not) but because of precision needed. I guess I'll be happy If i'm able to make traces down to 0.025'' reliably.
