whats everyone working on these days?
i'm gearing up to make my cnc mill. over the past few months i've been looking at other peoples designs and construction methods and determining what would be feasible for me, as well as get me the results i want.
i put in a lot of thought and decided that a steel frame embedded in epoxy granite (polymer concrete) would be my best option. i've made the equivalent of a scratch drawing in autocad and a cardboard mockup to wrap my head around everything. i think it's going well.
i'm trying to make sure that my build is optimized for all the cool upgrades i might want to do in the future, like swapping out a chinese spindle for a motor and pulley configuration, adding coolant, auto zeroing and other stuff. i still haven't figured out some stuff like the specifics of how the bed will mount, most of the mounts between the axis and the ballscrews, and most of the electrical stuff. i don't even know my dimensions yet.
i just ordered a granite surface plate, horizontal dial indicator and a mounting arm, and some 123 blocks. i plan to scrape most of the surfaces flat myself so i also need to get a scraper and some prussian blue. hopefully i'll get started on the mold in the next week or two. this is a pretty large leap up from the CETME project so i hope im not in over my head.