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.
It is meant mostly for milling circuit boards and laser engraving. I believe belts are good enough for that since the bit load is so tiny here.
Later though I want to upgrade to ballscrews and will have to redesign the current machine.
For PCB isolation milling the thing that usually bites first isn’t X/Y stiffness, it’s Z. Copper clad is never perfectly flat and rarely clamped dead level, and with a V-bit a few hundredths of a mm of height error changes the trace width a lot. Whatever drive you pick, plan for probing (a clip on the bit, the copper as the contact) and a height map / auto-leveling step in your sender; Candle and bCNC both do it. That will matter more for your results than belts vs. screws.
On single vs. dual Y screws: if you go dual later, drive both screws from one motor with a closed belt loop rather than two motors. That keeps them in sync mechanically and avoids the racking/binding problem mentioned above. For a small PCB/laser machine though, one screw under a moving bed is simpler and plenty rigid.
If that’s all you’re doing you can probably get away with belts. The laser engraving, for sure. Most of the commercial diode laser options are already belt driven.