An attractive orange CNC mill sitting ona bench.

3D Printed Milling Machine Is Solid As A Rock

April 13, 2025 by Tyler August 58 Comments

There are no shortage of CNC machines in the DIY space these days, but sometimes you just need to do things your own way. That’s what [Chris Borges] decided when he put together this rock-solid, concrete-filled CNC milling machine.

The concrete body of this machine is housed inside a 3D printed shell, which makes for an attractive skin as well as a handy mold. Within the concrete is a steel skeleton, with the ‘rebar’ being made of threaded rods and a length of square tubing to hold the main column. You can see the concrete being poured in around the rebar in the image, or watch it happen in the build video embedded below.

An image of the main column of [Chris]'s CNC mill as the concrete is added. The steel reinforcement is clearly visible. — In goes the concrete, up goes the rigidity.

All three axes slide on linear rails, and are attached to lead screws driven by the omnipresent NEMA 17 steppers. The air-cooled spindle, apparently the weak-point of the design, is attached to a pivoting counterweight, but make no mistake: it is on rails. All-in-all, it looks like a very rigid, and very capable design — [Chris] shows it cutting through aluminum quite nicely.

Given that [Chris] has apparently never used a true mill before, this design came out remarkably well. Between the Bill of Materials and 45 page step-by-step assembly instructions, he’s also done a fantastic job documenting the build for anyone who wants to put one together for themselves.

This isn’t the first concrete-filled project we’ve highlighted from [Chris], you may remember seeing his lathe on these pages. It certainly isn’t the first CNC mill we’ve covered, either.

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Your Badminton Racket Needs Restringing? There’s A DIY Machine For That

March 27, 2025 by Elliot Williams 4 Comments

We don’t often get our badminton rackets restrung, but if we did, [kuokuo702]’s PicoBETH project would be where we’d turn. This is a neat machine build for a very niche application, but it’s also a nicely elaborated project with motors, load cells, and even a sweet knobby-patterned faceplate that is certainly worth a look even if you’re not doing your own restringing.

We’ll admit that everything we know about restringing rackets we learned by watching [kuokuo]’s demo video, but the basic procedure goes like this: you zigzag the string through the holes in the racket, controlling the tension at each stage along the way. A professional racket frame and clamp hold the tension constant while you fiddle the string through the next hole, but getting the tension just right in the first place is the job of [kuokuo]’s machine. It does this with a load cell, stepper motor, and ball screw, all under microcontroller control. Pull the string through, let the machine tension it, clamp it down, and then move on to the next row.

Automating the tension head allows [kuokuo] to do some fancy tricks, like pre-stretching the strings and even logging the tension in the string at each step along the way. The firmware has an extensive self-calibration procedure, and in all seems to be very professional. But it’s not simply functional; it also has a fun LEGO-compatible collection of bumps integrated into the 3D-printed dust cover. That way, your minifigs can watch you at work? Why not!

Automating random chores is a great excuse to build fun little machines, and in that vein, we salute [kuokuo]’s endeavor. Once you start, you’ll find stepper motors sprouting all around like crocuses in a spring field. And speaking of spring, Easter is just around the corner. So if you don’t play badminton, maybe it’s time to build yourself an eggbot.

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Mural: The Plotter That Draws On Walls

March 24, 2025 by Lewin Day 15 Comments

Let’s say you’ve got a big bare wall in your home, and you want some art on it. You could hang a poster or a framed artwork, or you could learn to paint a mural yourself. Or, like [Nik Ivanov], you could build a plotter called Mural, and get it to draw something on the wall for you.

The build is straightforward enough. It uses a moving carriage suspended from toothed belts attached to two points up high on the wall. Stepper motors built into the carriage reel the belts in and out to move it up and down the wall, and from side to side. In this case, [Nik] selected a pair of NEMA 17 steppers to do the job. They’re commanded by a NodeMCU ESP32, paired with TMC2209 stepper motor drivers. The carriage also includes a pen lifter, which relies on a MG90s servo to lift the drawing implement away from the wall.

The build is quite capable, able to recreate SVG vector graphics quite accurately, without obvious skew or distortion. [Nik] has been using the plotter with washable Crayola markers, so he can print on the wall time and again without leaving permanent marks. It’s a great way to decorate—over and over again—on a budget. Total estimated cost is under $100, according to [Nik].

We’ve featured some neat projects along these lines before, too. Video after the break.

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“Unnecessary” Automation Of A DIY Star Lamp Build

March 23, 2025 by Elliot Williams 10 Comments

It all started with a gift idea: a star-field lamp in the form of a concrete sphere with lightpipes poking out where the stars are, lit up from the inside by LEDs. When you’re making one of these, maybe-just-maybe you’d be willing to drill a thousand holes and fit a thousand little plastic rods, but by the time you’re making a second, it’s time to build a machine to do the work for you.

So maybe we quibble with the channel name “Unnecessary Automation,” but we won’t quibble with the results. It’s a machine that orients a sphere, drills the hole, inserts the plastic wire, glues it together with a UV-curing glue, and then trims the end off. And if you like crazy machines, it’s a beauty.

The video goes through all of the design thoughts in detail, but it’s when it comes time to build the machine that the extra-clever bits emerge. For instance, [UA] used a custom 3D-printed peristaltic pump to push the glue out. Taking the disadvantage of peristaltic pumps – that they pulse – as an advantage, a custom housing was designed that dispensed the right amount between the rollers. The rolling glue dispenser mechanism tips up and back to prevent drips.

There are tons of other project-specific hacks here, from the form on the inside of the sphere that simplifies optic bundling and routing to the clever use of a razor blade as a spring. Give it a watch if you find yourself designing your own wacky machines. We think Rube Goldberg would approve. Check out this video for a more software-orientated take on fiber-optic displays.

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CNC Router And Fiber Laser Bring The Best Of Both Worlds To PCB Prototyping

March 4, 2025 by Dan Maloney 22 Comments

Jack of all trades, master of none, as the saying goes, and that’s especially true for PCB prototyping tools. Sure, it’s possible to use a CNC router to mill out a PCB, and ditto for a fiber laser. But neither tool is perfect; the router creates a lot of dust and the fiberglass eats a lot of tools, while a laser is great for burning away copper but takes a long time to burn through all the substrate. So, why not put both tools to work?

Of course, this assumes you’re lucky enough to have both tools available, as [Mikey Sklar] does. He doesn’t call out which specific CNC router he has, but any desktop machine should probably do since all it’s doing is drilling any needed through-holes and hogging out the outline of the board, leaving bridges to keep the blanks connected, of course.

Once the milling operations are done, [Mikey] switches to his xTool F1 20W fiber laser. The blanks are placed on the laser’s bed, the CNC-drilled through holes are used as fiducials to align everything, and the laser gets busy. For the smallish boards [Mikey] used to demonstrate his method, it only took 90 seconds to cut the traces. He also used the laser to cut a solder paste stencil from thin brass shim stock in only a few minutes. The brief video below shows the whole process and the excellent results.

In a world where professionally made PCBs are just a few mouse clicks (and a week’s shipping) away, rolling your own boards seems to make little sense. But for the truly impatient, adding the machines to quickly and easily make your own PCBs just might be worth the cost. One thing’s for sure, though — the more we see what the current generation of desktop fiber lasers can accomplish, the more we feel like skipping a couple of mortgage payments to afford one.

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Water Jets Will Carve Your Pumpkin

February 20, 2025 by Lewin Day 8 Comments

Carving pumpkins by hand is hot, sweaty, messy work, and a great way to slice your way into a critical artery. Why not let a water jet do it for you? It’ll be cleaner and more precise to boot, and [Jo_Journey] is here to show us how.

Obviously, you’ll need a water jet machine, there’s no getting around that. You’ll also still have to do the basic preparation of the pumpkin yourself—cutting a porthole into the top and mucking it out is your job. With that done, you must then mount the pumpkin on two metal rods which will be used to mount it in the water jet machine’s working area.

You can then create a vector file of your design, and use your chosen software to generate the G-code to run the water jet. [Jo_Journey] uses Scribe, and recommends cutting at a speed of around 200 in/min at low pressure. Remember, it’s pumpkin you’re cutting, not high-strength steel.

There is some inaccuracy, of course—your pumpkin’s surface is not a flat plane, after all—but the results are good enough for most Halloween-related purposes. Even despite the geometrical issues, though, [Jo_Journey] shows us that you can get pleasantly sharp edges on your design. That’s very hard to achieve by hand!

We do love a good holiday hack around these parts, even if it’s out of season. If you’ve been cooking up your own pumpkinous plans, don’t hesitate to let us know! Earlier is sometimes better—after all, who has time to hack together a project if you’ve just read about it on October 29?

Matthias Wandel Hates CNC Machines In Person

February 9, 2025 by Elliot Williams 24 Comments

Prolific woodworking YouTuber [Matthias Wandel] makes some awesome mechanical contraptions, and isn’t afraid of computers, but has never been a fan of CNC machines in the woodshop. He’s never had one either, so until now he couldn’t really talk. But he had the parts on hand, so he built a wooden CNC router. It’s lovely.

The router itself is what 3D printer folks would call a bed-slinger, and it’s cobbled together out of scrap plywood. Some of the parts have extra holes drilled in them, but “measure once, drill twice” is our motto, so we’re not one to judge. He spends a lot of time making “crash pads” that keep the frame from destroying itself while he’s building it – once the CNC is actually controlling things with the limit switches, we presume they won’t be necessary, but their design is fun anyway.

If you’re at all interested in CNC machines, you should give this video a watch. Not because it’s done the “right” way, but because it’s a CNC that’s being built on a budget from first principles, by an experienced wood builder, and it’s illuminating to watch him go. And by the end of the video, he is making additional parts for the machine on the machine, with all the holes in the right places, so he’s already stepping in the right direction.

He doesn’t love digital design and fabrication yet, though. If you’re making one-offs, it probably isn’t worth the setup time to program the machine, especially if you have all of his jigs and machines at your disposal. Still, we kind of hope he’ll see the light.

Of course, this isn’t the first wooden CNC router we’ve seen around these parts, and it probably won’t be the last. If you want to go even more fundamental, [Homo Faciens]’s series of CNC machines is a lovely mashup of paperclips and potential. Or, if refinement is more your style, this benchtop machine is the bee’s knees.

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