Posts Tagged ‘cnc wood router’

Which one is better?

Saturday, June 12th, 2010

Lots of people have made extremely impressive machines with ACME screws and stepper motors. These components are perfectly suited for hobby and light industrial cnc machines, and in general offer a much better value than ballscrews for people interested in doing cutting tasks that don’t require +/-0.001″ accuracies or better.

While ballscrews are more efficient, high pitch ACME also runs smoothly and does a great job of converting rotational motion to linear travel. Furthermore, unless you get a double ball nut or a ball nut with oversized balls loaded in it for your ballscrew, as well as angular contact end bearings for them ($$$), it’s possible to get worse backlash in a ballscrew than in a low cost anti-backlash ACME setup.

As to stepper motors of cnc router, these are proven technology that are easy to setup, and can offer truly impressive performance. If one has unlimited funds, then by all means, go with servo drives and planetary gearheads, and have fun tuning PID loops. It is fun — I used to do this for high speed pick and place robots. But for a beginner or anyone on a budget, steppers can offer an excellent performance/$ ratio, especially when coupled with a high end drive like the G540, and are quite easy to set up.

But in Redsail, you can find different types, ball screws, square linear guide ways, etc. We also have servo motor for our woodworking router.

Suggestion for buying a CNC router

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

When deciding on purchasing a cnc router, take into account both the capacity (bit shank) and size (Horsepower) when making your decision. A router with 1 HP or less should be just fine for crafts, hobbies, models, etc. while a router with 1 3/4 HP or more and 1/2 inch bit shank capacity will be needed on professional projects involving work with hardwoods or shaping/forming pieces in a router table. The added power will allow for deeper cuts and completing cuts in 1 try. A lightweight router with plastic housing should be fine for light use but consider metal housing for more professional woodworking. Modern routers have electronic features like the electronic variable speed control which should assist you in making more precise cuts. The EVS has a “soft start” feature which users say is ideal since it speeds up the motor gradually. Many plunge routers already have this feature and more and more fixed-base routers are getting it as well. If you do inlay work or dovetails and need precision cutting depths, then make sure the model you choose comes with a fine adjustment control. A “self releasing” collet (holds the bit) should prevent stuck bits and are usually found in higher quality routers.

You can purchase many routers at Redsail and you can read customer reviews and get feedback on the advantages and disadvantages of each model. Of course going into Lowes or Home Depot to actually touch the levers and see them in action is priceless research as well.