I’m designing a partially 3D printable CNC machine and have some options regarding the motion system.
I can choose between belts and ballscrews. Currently I have 2 ballscrews. One for X which is easy but what is the best way to control the Y axis?
Either I use one ballscrew and move the workpiece back and forth or I get two of them and push/pull the X gantry back and forth. A second ballscrew significantly adds to the cost of the machine but is there any benefit to doing so?
Bed slinging seems fine for slow speed operations such as CNC milling.
Steal inspiration from the RIGCNC project. A number of people have built them (myself included) and if you go digging through the internet archives for the site, there is a pretty good writeup about why it was designed the way that it was. It could be a useful launching point for your own design.
I dug up the writeup here: https://web.archive.org/web/20230421201903/https://www.rigcnc.com/
I actually have a pretty decent design already, it’s just that I’m looking to upgrade to ballscrews and unlock more potential with the machine.
It is designed around linear rails that I was able to get through my job, they come from discarded equipment and I wanted to give them a second use. It has worked as a decent laser engraver for a while now.
The next iteration will have two sliders per rail on the Y axis as fortification, instead of one MGN12H it will use two MGN12C sliders. I also want to reprint the corner blocks with gyroid infill and fill them up with resin or concrete.