A Desktop CNC for £500

[Daftlander]

I can't seem to find any great buyers guides for hobby cnc machines. I'm looking for something that will fit in a small garage. Ideally it would also be able to work with aluminium. 

 

Anyone seen/heard of anything worth a shot? 

[Hackentosher]

I think you need to about double your budget.  I would look at the Shapeoko, as it's probably one of the best desktop machines you could buy, but I believe it's about $1000 USD. Also it'll take a lot of tuning to get aluminum cutting well. The cutting forces involved with machining, especially metals, are insane and the main limiting factor is the rigidity of the machine. It takes a very solid structure and solid actuators to combat those cutting forces and get a nice clean cut. 

[GhostRoadieBL]

If you can find one I'm also looking. Closest I've found is modified Chinese ones with better motors 

[Kadzo]

On 1/27/2021 at 9:32 PM, Daftlander said:

I can't seem to find any great buyers guides for hobby cnc machines. I'm looking for something that will fit in a small garage. Ideally it would also be able to work with aluminium. 

 

Anyone seen/heard of anything worth a shot? 

For the price you have listed, you can hardly find and normal CNC machines without building it your self, even then its a stretch. Before purchasing consider the work area of the CNC itself, what do you plan to be your work piece? Depending on the size of the machine and the work piece prices can vary substantially and size is directly related to rigidity of the machine.

Also in what accuracy are we speaking? What is you budget for the tooling? What is the power limit you have? 

My suggestion is not to start with the price, start with the size (you are probably limited with space in one way or other), then accuracy, then consider the tooling cost for the bits fixtures etc, combine all that and then check is the investment feasible for you.

 

I built a couple of CNC's in various sizes and i can tell you that there is a lot of "hidden costs" that people usually don't place in consideration before building the machine itself.

 

[ColinLTT]

8 hours ago, Kadzo said:

...i can tell you that there is a lot of "hidden costs" that people usually don't place in consideration before building the machine itself.

 

This x100 

You're essentially looking at an aluminum extrusion based 3018 style machine (plz no)  or something like a Shapeoko or an XCarve. I would HIGHLY suggest you go the small CNC router route. But that being said, its ok to buy a machine that isn't exactly what you need to get an understanding of what you DO need - no machine is going to be perfect for everything. 

Get yourself a pack of bits from aliexpress, a router, and watch some Saunders Machine Works videos to get yourself started.