5th International & 26th All India Manufacturing Technology, Design and Research Conference (AIMTDR 2014) December

12th–14th, 2014,
IIT Guwahati, Assam, India

DIY CNC: A REVIEW

Dhaval B. Patel1*, Aniruddh R. Kyada2.

1
*Assistant Professor, Gandhinagar Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar – 382721,
dhaval.patel1@git.org.in
2
Assistant Professor, Silver Oak College of Engineering& Technology – Ahmedabad
– 382481, ani_kyadaauto@yahoo.co.in

Abstract
The CNC machines are there from many years, but mostly they are unreachable to vast community specially
students. Another disadvantages with them is that they are bulky and expensive. Why can’t we make a CNC like
printer? Why can’t we make a CNC for small jobs with low capacity? There is lake of low cost CNC in market
which can teach and also work. All CNC are general in terms of controlling (you just have to control three axis
just that) but it produce more complexity when they came in existence. They produce different output i.e.
drilling, milling, turning etc. In this paper we are showing that how you can build up CNC using open source
hardware and software? What are the basic requirement for building a CNC and how to control them?
Keywords: DIY CNC, CNC,

1. Introduction
There were times when products were more and more use of plastic now changing this
produced in mass quantity and hence the prices were scenario and it is
lower. But they lack the personalization. Henry Ford
was offering his Model-T in only one colour. As
things get progressed the variety is increased, but becoming like home appliance (TV, Refrigerator, AC
today each and every customer wants their own etc…). So why we can’t minimise
personalized items. Which is the reason Android is
more popular than iOS. The CNC which have very small working area and
working on softer materials like wood, plastic,
Nowadays more and more machines are being aluminium etc... Currently in market there are many
converted in CNC machines due to their high solutions are available which are reviewed in this
accuracy, high precision, less setting time and greater paper.
repeatability. One aspect of using
CNC is that you can use unskilled Figure 1 Basic components of a CNC The main focus of this paper
or semi-skilled labours. The is to build up the CNC using
invention of CNC was for batch production and not open source hardware and software as much as
for mass production though the cost is high. The basic possible. To initialize a CNC building company it
controlling of a CNC is same as the printer. The requires lots of funding and brains. But, due to crowd
reason is they are bigger and also stronger but not funding website like Kickstarter, Indiegogo and many
good for home environment rather they are mostly more it is possible to fund your projects. Also as open
suited to workshops. The invention of 3D printer and

CNC Components

Mechanical Electrical
Power
Frame Drive System Carriage Controller Driver Actuator (Motor)
Supply

Acuator Guide For Drive For cutting

587-1
DIY CNC: A REVIEW

source community grows it helps in terms of software

and way to build up the controllers which is very
useful and low cost than using Siemens or Fanuc. Any
CNC machine (Router, Turning centre, milling centre,
3D printer or even simple 2D Printer) has two types of
component Mechanical and Electrical (which consist
electronics also).

2. Mechanical Components
2.1 Frame
The structure which supports the whole machine is
called frame. It can be made of various materials like
wood, aluminium etc… Generally for lighter work
wood will be preferred as it is easy to work with it,
aluminium give higher stiffness compare to wood but
it requires machine tools to build up the frame.
Generally box like structures are preferred and they
made using above material.
2.2 Drive System
It is the most important part of any CNC machine
after the controller as it would carry your tool (pencil,
paint brush, printing head, Dremel, cutting tool etc…)
to desired position as per command provided by
controller. The general drive system specified on basis
of accuracy and load capacity as all the load working
on tool is transferred to frame via this drive system.’
It is made of two parts actuator and guide system, the
main purpose of actuator is to transfer the controlled
motion of electric motor to carriage. Guides are used
for proper guiding of the carriage and also it’s reduce
the friction hence increasing the response time and
accuracy of the machine.
2.2.1 Actuators
(a) Rope drive (thread drive)
The drive with lowest capacity as it would just guide
the tool but in case of forced feed it would be
unusable. The most desirable condition for its use
when tool and work surface are barely in contact i.e.
painting with paint brush or drawing with pencil. It
would develop very less friction and hence this drive
would be suffice to operate the machine. It is required
a pulley to attached with motor shaft to connect the
rope with actuator. It also requires bearing in the path
of the rope otherwise friction between rope and guide
will increase too much to for rope. The benefits of
rope drive is oblivious one its cost it also not required
expensive helical coupling or timing pulley.
Figure 2 Rope drive with pulley
(http://www.watercolorbot.com)
(b) Timing belt drive
Provide the benefits of rope drive as less expensive
than ball screw and eliminate the disadvantages of
rope drive as provide high accuracy. The timing belts
are belt with profiled grove which also fits in same
cavity made on timing pulley. It helps to reduce the
slippage and also maintain constant velocity ratio
between electric motor and drive. The GT2 belts and
pulley are mostly used in all DIY CNC. There is other
standard also like T5, T2.5, MXL it requires some
times ideal pulley to increase the tension in belt. A
standard GT2 belt and pulley is shown in figure 3.
Figure 3 GT2 belt with timing
pulley(www.excitron.com/webdocs/Items/Details198.
cfm)
(c) Bolt and Nut drive
Most sturdy and stiffen drive, capable of transforming
the higher power with higher velocity. It consist a
threaded bolt and matching nut. It provide higher
accuracy as there is no slippage between nut and bolt.
It is cheaper than ball screw but suffice for our DIY
purpose. It is mostly used drive system like router.
The mostly used standard is M5, M8 and M10. In
most of the DIY CNC it used for Z drive as it is very
compact than belt or rope drive. It requires a helical
coupling (beam coupling) to connect with motor. Both
are shown in figure 4.

587-2
5th International & 26th All India Manufacturing Technology, Design and Research Conference (AIMTDR 2014) December 12th–14th, 2014,
IIT Guwahati, Assam, India

Figure 4 Threaded bolt with helical coupling

2.2.2 Guide system
(a) Simple groove
It would be cheapest of all method just put a grove
with corresponding male member attached with guide.
It is mostly used with rope drive system and virtually Figure 6 Maker slide
having zero cost. The guiding of the drive is more (https://www.inventables.com/technologies/makers
https://www.inventables.com/technologies/makers
depend on tension of rope drive rather than accuracy lide)
of the groove.
(b) Slider drive 2.3 Carriage

These are basicallyy telescopic channel made of
generally steel and used in furniture purpose. They
provide high accuracy comparatively to rope drive
and also with stand against higher load but the friction
between their inner components is high.
Carriagee or tool holder is used for holding the tool. If
the tool is passive it just hold the tool and if the tool is
active it also holds the DC motor which rotates the
tool.
2.3.1 2D machine

In two dimensional CNC the tooling system are

generally passive so theyy are holding dead too only.
They are connected with two drives which is moving
them in x or y direction and also hold it.

Figure 5 Telescopic channell (courtesy ofMetro

of
wire products)
(c)Maker Slide

Maker slide is an open source linear bearing for CNC

equipment that is low cost and extremely easy to
integrate into your design. It is an aluminium
extrusion with two special V-shaped
shaped rails for wheels
to roll on. This component is interesting for people
designing CNC machines because it acts as both the
structural support and the linear bearing system. The
biggest design, cost and fabrication hurdles in a new
CNC machine design are the linear bearings. With the Figure 5 Carriage for 2D Machine
help of some Delrin wheel and some side plates plate you (http://www.watercolorbot.com)
atercolorbot.com)
can easily build up the drive system for your CNC. As
it using rollers for guiding it has very low friction and 2.3.2 3D machine
higher accuracy due v-rail
rail guide system.
In three dimensional machine carriage is generally
mounted on z axis. Most 3D machine are having
active tools so DC motor which is driving the tool is

587-3
DIY CNC: A REVIEW

mounted on carriage and tool is attached with this DC
motor.
controlling power is required Arduino Mega 2560
board is used. The GRBL controller which converts
the G code in to machine
hine language is flashed on
microcontroller (ATmega328 in case of UNO and
ATmega2560 in case of Mega 2560) of the board.

Figure 6 Carriage with rotary tool

Figure 8 Arduino UNO (http://www.a
www.arduino.cc)
(http://www.shapeoko.com)
shapeoko.com)

2.3.3 3D printing machine 3.2 Motor Driver

In 3D printing system generally plastic wires are used
for printing. The head consist of plastic melting
component along with wire feed mechanism and also
a cooling fan. Wire feed mechanism is used to feed
the plastic
lastic wire forward as it consumed. A thermistor
or ceramic heater is used as heating element which
melts the plastic (ABS or PLA).
The Arduino board are operating on 5V and motor are
operating on high voltage
oltage ranging from 12 V to 36 V.
So there is need of driver which can take command
from controller and drive the motor. There are many
motor driver IC are available in market (i.e. A4988,
L293D, DRV8825, DRV8824 and DRV 8834 etc...)

Figure 7 3D printing head Figure 9 A4988 Stepper Motor Driver

(http://www.kisslicer.com)
kisslicer.com) (http://www.pololu.com
http://www.pololu.com)

3 Electrical components Table 1 Comparison between different stepper

motor drivers
3.1Controller
Sr. Voltage Continuous Max
Driver
The controller is used for converting the G-code
G into No. Range (V) current Current
machine language. The most widely used and low 1 DRV8834 2.5–10.8 1.5 A 2A
cost controller is Ardunio. It is a microcontroller 2 DRV8824 8.2-45 0.75 A 1.2 A
based board which have wide application and can be 3 DRV8825 8.2-45 1.5 A 2.2 A
programmed for multipurpose use. It can drive servo 4 A4988 8-35 1A 2A
and stepper motor along with DC motor. For 5 A4988
8-35 1.2 A 2A
controlling 3 stepper motor Arduino UNO will black
sufficient. But for 3D printing machine were more

587-4
5th International & 26th All India Manufacturing Technology, Design and Research Conference (AIMTDR 2014) December 12th–14th, 2014,
IIT Guwahati, Assam, India

3.3 Actuator 4. References

3.3.1 Stepper motor (1)http://watercolorbot.com/press.html

Actuators are nothing but the electric motor which (2) www.shapeoko.com
drive the machine. In most of the DIY CNC stepper
motors are used as it is good combination of accuracy (3)https://www.inventables.com/technologies/desktop
and cost. Stepper motor are ruining in steps usually of -3d-carving-cnc-mill-kit-shapeoko-2
1.8O or 3.6O.Generally stepper motor with 100 steps
per revolution are used which can be reduce by micro
steeping of the motor. The facility if micro stepping is (4)http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardMega2560
available on motor driver. Both bipolar and unipolar
stepper motors are used for machine which is couple (4) www.rap.wikia.com
with drive system using pulley or helical coupling
based on the drive chosen. The standard motor are (5)http://www.pololu.com/category/120/stepper-
NEMA 17 or for more power NEMA 23. motor-drivers

3.3.2 DC Motor (6) http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardUno

DC motor are used for operating the spindle of the
machine. It is present only in metal removing
machine. Dc motor having 24V or higher are used for
spindle and the cutting tool is directly attached with
the shaft of the motor.
(7) http://othermachine.co/products/othermill/
(8)https://www.inventables.com/technologies/makersl
ide

Figure 10 Stepper motor

Table 2 Comparison between well-known DIY

Routers, Shapeoko and Othermill

Sr.
Detail Shapeoko Othermill
No.
Work 298X301X54 140X114X32
1
volume mm mm
Drive
2 NEMA17 NEMA17
Motor
Arduino with Arduino with
3 Controller
GRBL GRBL
Spindle tool
4 1/8” 1/8”
size
5 Accuracy 0.01 mm 0.02 mm

587-5