CNC Mini Mill Made From HDPE, Steel, Aluminum & Cast Iron

Here are a bunch of good pictures of my latest CNC Mini Mill concoction. It is made using HDPE board material from the Home Depot, steel tubing, aluminum and a cast iron angle plate from Enco. It ended up being a heavy (more than 40 lbs) and solid little machine. I built this for around $100 not including the 25,000 rpm spindle motor. Take a look at the pictures.

9" x 6" x 4" CNC Mini Mill

Mini Mill - Side View

CNC Mini Mill with Spindle

CNC Mill - Front View

CNC Mini Mill - Z Axis View

CNC Mini Mill made from Steel Tubing

I was kicking around the idea of an affordable way to build a steel framed CNC Mini Milling machine. The best way to do this is to build your machine form standard sized available steel. I chose steel tubing covered with some sheet metal to protect the round linear guides from contaminants. The trick is getting your steel cut square. Most steel supply places will not guarantee any cuts being square. The most guaranteed way of getting the ends of your square tubing cut perpendicular is to take it to a machinist and have the one end milled square. You really only need to do this with one piece of your "L" shaped frame because the others ends don;t have anything mounting to it. The other challenges associated with using large steel tubing is bolting things to it. You can try and use thick walled tubing and tap it but thick walled tubing is more expensive. If you use thin walled tubing, it will be plenty strong but you may have to bolt through which presents accessibility issues with bolts, screws and nuts. Either way you choose to pursue this will be a good learning experience for you. Here is a picture of what I had designed.

CNC Mill Steel Tube Frame filled with Vinyl Concrete

I am not quite finished with the vinyl concrete idea for CNC machine frames. I did find more than one research paper on the dampening effects of concrete filled steel machine components. It reads that the dampening properties of steel tubing filled with vinyl concrete is the same or better than cast iron.

FREE CNC PLASMA CUTTING TABLE PLANS

As promised, here is my set of free CNC plasma cutting table plans. They are not perfectly completed but there is enough information in the layout and detail dimensions to finish this machine. I also included the bill of materials table that includes the purchase items which is good to know. One other thing to note is this design is easier to build since you don't have to drive the machine with dual lead screws or dual rack and pinion. I used one lead screw down the middle. You will need to make sure your cutting air pressure isn't blasting 6 inches down to cut your lead screw. You must also weld in an angle iron guard in the movable table to protect your lead screw. 

Cnc-build 2x4 Cnc Plasma Free Plans

CNC Plasma Cutting Machine Free Plans - Sneak Peak!

Hi All,

I've been working on an affordable CNC Plasma machine. It utilizes a seldom used center lead screw and stationary gantry style of design. I chose to do this because it allows you to you a single drive motor and less drive components than having a dual drive x-axis system. The center leadscrew will be protected from the cutting path both with distance and a steel cover. This is a 2' x 4' machine with a 4" travel z-axis. The top box does have replaceable steel slats as well. The rest of the plans are on there way and will be free!

How to Build a CNC Mini Mill for $75.00 or Less

I have finally finished the plans for my $75.00 CNC Mini Milling Machine. They are available for sale at Scribd.com. The $75.00 price does not include steppers or the router and mount. Here is a PDF preview of them.

75 Dollar Mini Mill

$75 CNC Mini Mill Parts Machined

We have some of our Mini Mill parts machined. We will need some time to get the larger pieces of material in to produce the frame side pieces but we will push forward. Stay tuned.