Make Article: CNC Machining vs 3D Printing

Here an excerpt from the article that talks about how to build your own CNC. DIY CNC "Going with milling doesn’t mean you have to give up on self-replication or on making your own machine. Patrick Hood-Daniel, author of Build Your Own CNC Machine, makes a scratch-build CNC kit capable of making all of its custom parts, just like the RepRap 3D printer and its progeny. The frame is built of custom-cut plywood. Everything else is standard hardware. The aluminum angle, bolts, and screws are available from any hardware store. The leadscrews and anti-backlash nuts will probably have to be mail-ordered from McMaster-Carr and DumpsterCNC, but you can get by with lesser hardware store parts in a pinch. The stepper motors and stepper drivers are completely generic and available from countless sources. The spindle is an ordinary wood router. I use a Porter-Cable 892. As with the RepRap, the trick with Patrick’s CNC router is getting a seed unit. Fortunately, any CNC router that can handle a 2’×4' sheet of plywood is capable of making the parts. Check out MAKE’s digital fabrication resource page for where to get CNC access, and you’re likely to find somebody local with the necessary equipment. (If you can’t find anybody to cut the parts for you, Patrick sells several kits.) To get the CAD and CAM files for the parts, download the plans for the CNC Routing Machine Kit Version 1.3. Videos on the website explain how to put everything together. The files are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license, which means you can make machines for yourself and for your friends, but you can’t sell them commercially. The CAM files are in the proprietary CamBam format, but there’s a free version available, and it can read and write DXF files. Most good CAM software is very expensive, so if you don’t already have a favorite, stick with CamBam. It can do both CAD and CAM, and even the free version is tremendously full-featured." Make sure to read the full article here here