A very cheap CNC milling/carving machine

[graham mcdonald]

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/NEW-6040-ROU ... 3377345868

Almost impossibly cheap but a 1HP motor

It is very tempting

cheers

[peter.coombe]

There has been some discussion about these on the woodworking forum. Basically it is buyer beware. They are not shipped from Australia, but come direct from China. Just look at the shipping cost. It doesn't cost over $500 to ship within Australia. Some people have bought these and have had few problems, others have bought them and have had no end of problems. The warantee means nothing. The main problems seem to be with the electronics, but there have also been reports of damage and things put together wrongly. So, unless you know what you are doing and can fix the problems, and are prepared for problems, and can't afford anything better I would not bother.

[graham mcdonald]

It does seem to good to be true

[Nick]

There has been some discussion about these on the woodworking forum. Basically it is buyer beware. They are not shipped from Australia, but come direct from China. Just look at the shipping cost. It doesn't cost over $500 to ship within Australia. Some people have bought these and have had few problems, others have bought them and have had no end of problems. The warantee means nothing. The main problems seem to be with the electronics, but there have also been reports of damage and things put together wrongly. So, unless you know what you are doing and can fix the problems, and are prepared for problems, and can't afford anything better I would not bother.

When you say the electronics Peter, does the problem seem to be in the interface between computer & controller i.e a software issue, or in the actual physical bits of the controller & motors (wiring, resistors, PCB's & the such like)?
p.s I just love the Chinglish the guy uses, manual's probably worse I'm guessing.

[peter.coombe]

The problems have been with the actual physical bits. Some have had problems with things not wired up properly, sometimes dangerously wrong, others have had problems with it just not working at all, or one controller blown but the others work ok. Some people have just thrown the controller in the bin and bought a G540 controller locally and use the motors supplied with the machine. In general the reports have been that the machine works well once you get it going, but it can be a nightmare to get it working.

[J.F. Custom]

4. We keep a good relationship with the supplier, so that we can get the stable and reliable stock for our client.

The reliable stock from the same supplier as opposed to ?

5. We only sale the top-quality machine, we can provide the reasonable price since we have fight with the supplier as a lowest cost as we can.

We keep good relationship with supplier, we have fight with supplier... OK.

Backlash, well yeah maybe... BUT this unit features -

Anti-blackflash

Phew!




But seriously, anyone considering this please also note on top of what Peter has said -

The claim "Ship from AU, Duty Free" is false.

Not only do they not ship from within Australia, you may indeed pay Duty @5% and very likely GST @10% as well. Note that GST is charged on the machine value and on the shipping value. It is possible the Duty is included in the shipping charge, depending on who they send with. But it is also possible they make this claim by devaluing the goods on the customs declaration in order to avoid the charges, or sending the item as a "gift" or "sample". This is dubious at best - read illegal. It could also complicate matters for insurance claims, tax claims etc. I'm not certain of any FTA that covers CNC ex China.

Each to their own.

Also, this does not include any software to run the machine. You will need a capable PC with Mach3 for a start. Mach3 is about $150. That only drives the machine though. You will also require CAD/CAM packages that range in price from perhaps $200 to over $10'000, not to mention the learning curve involved therein. Some elements are fairly easy to design, while organic 3D shapes can take far more work. Just pointing out for those completely new to the idea of CNC that it is not as though you can plug it in on arrival and off you go.

@Nick - No, not software issues. Problems have ranged from factory wiring being "back the front", to dead VFD's, dead driver cards etc. Some get lucky and have relatively few issues aside from set-up adjustments and fine tweaking.

**EDIT - Just saw Peter replied to you Nick. Too slow typing through lunch

Jeremy.

[Nick]

Thanks chaps, built to the chinese "budget" standard & distributed using the same standard obviously. Just wonder how the guy gets away with his blurb, the EBay equivalent here in Un Zud (Trademe) Im pretty sure, have the power to block dodgy marketers/sellers & for individuals to have legal rights against buying goods that are plainly falsely represented on the site. Mind you it still doesn't stop the keen shysters
The one day claim on the shipping is clearly false right from the off!

[jeremyb]

There are free software alternatives, would be pretty dubious of that at that price tho!

[simso]

Having hand made my own cnc, ""seriously a file / hacksaw / lumps of steel" I can tell you the price is good for the item. dont get me wrong, the advertsied unit there is not a sensational unit, very small very limited but a great start

If you wanted to machine a guitar body I think you would kill the machine, if you wanted to use it for inlaying fretboards headstocks light engraving I think it would be fantastic.

The biggest problem with smaller machines is the use of whats called a stepper motor, this is the small motor that moves the machine to the new position, they can bind and the machine will think its going to a new position but the steppers are slipping so it ruins your job, servo motors are the ultimate but huge pries, geckos are a stepper motor but a strong heavy duty version.

It appears to be running on linear rails which is good and one would hope it uses ballscrews, 5 years ago, for 2.5k you would get a cnc machine that runs on acme threads and round tubing

Ask away if you have questions...

[Phil Mailloux]

There's nothing wrong with stepper motors, my homemade cnc also uses them and yes they can bind but you also have to know how and what to cut for material, the steppers usually only bind if they're cutting too thick or too fast the material they're working on, its up to the programmer/user to know at what rate and thickness his machine can cut. Mine could go fairly fast but i'm only using a 1HP laminate trimmer, it didn't take long in the beginning to find out I need to take thin multiple passes cut at a slow pace. Servos start at around 3k just for the electronics package so its out of range for a lot of guys, you can get stepper packages starting at a couple of hundred bucks, it makes a huge difference to the price of your cnc in the end.

I'm using a gecko G540 system and couldn't be happier with it. I make mostly electrics anyway and use the CNC pretty much only for templates, the CNC could probably be good enough to mill my body and neck parts but honestly, I have no patience (and ears) for listening to a router run non-stop for an hour for milling a body and i'd much rather do the work by hand anyway, so the CNC is used to create tempates that are to exact dimensions in CAD so all I need to do is slap the templates on a body blank and start routing away, in half and hour or so I go from body blank to a body ready for final sanding and I know my neck will line up just fine with the pickup routs and cavities once I assemble it. You do what you can with what you have really, no need for super expensive gear.

But to get back to the original poster, I probably wouldn't go for that machine, i'm sure the electronics will be junk and get a feeling the hardware might give you some headaches too. there's a big learning curve to learn to use a cnc properly and a big one too for learning to troubleshoot one with problems, I think it took me 6 months from the moment i finished building my machine to finally produce a template that wouldn't have gone straight in the bin.