DIY CNC Machine Basics

Those of you who want to build your own CNC machine, or at least jump ahead to buying one, have been chomping at the bit. You didn’t want to wade through all those basics to get here. But, you’ll find having that knowledge will really help you to make the right decisions when building or buying a CNC Machine.

Who would’ve thought anyone that wanted one could have a CNC machine right in their own home workshop?

You can buy completed machines from companies like Tormach or Carbide3D for very reasonable prices or you can build your own machine, either from scratch or as a conversion of an existing manual machine. Once you have your machine and know how to use it, you’ll be able to make beautiful parts quickly and easily.

But, there is a challenge–knowing how to use CNC to create your parts requires you to pick up a number of different kinds of knowledge. It’s not hard, but it’s also not very well organized or accessible. Until now.

With this page, we’re going to bring together links to articles that cover all the basics you’ll need to use a CNC machine or to get started with the planning to buy or make a CNC machine. If you go through these articles, you’ll wind up with a solid grounding in the basics.

You’ll know how things fit together and you’ll have the basic background you need to dig deeper into other areas of CNC you get interested in. We’ll also organize the page so the order the concepts and articles are presented is an ideal order for you to learn things in.

But, you don’t have to stick to that order if you don’t want to. Feel free to jump around and check out whatever interests you.

Buying or Building a CNC Machine

This is where you want to start, right? You want to get your hands on that CNC machine. If you’re anything like me, you’re not thinking about much of anything else. If you’re looking to enter the trade, perhaps you’re not thinking about Buying a machine right away. That’s fine, just skip ahead to the next chapter.

Otherwise, I’m going to start here because it’s where everyone wants to start. Just be advised, there’s a lot you could learn before getting a machine that would help you to select the best machine for your needs. There’s also enough to learn before you make your first CNC part that you should start before getting the machine just so you don’t have to look at the idle machine while you’re learning.

I’m not saying CNC is hard, but there’s a pretty good breadth of information you’ll need. Easy to learn, just a lot of pieces to put together. But hey, that’s why we wrote this guide for you.

What Kind of a CNC Machine Should You Get?

This is an important first question to answer. Most CNC’ers want one of 4 machines:

CNC Router CNC Mill 3D Printer CNC Plasma Table

A distant fifth place might be a CNC Lathe, but let’s put that on hold for a minute. The good news is we’ve put together a fabulous article that walks you through it. It considers all 4 machines and walks you through what their capabilities are, how hard they are to build, what it will cost, and so on.

Grab that article right here:

Buy, Build, or Kit?

Okay, that article talks about Building, but it also applies to helping you choose what kind of machine to Buy.

On the question of Buy or Build, you should boil the decision down to one simple question:

Do you want to make parts sooner or will you enjoy the whole process of building your own CNC Machine?

Before we go any further, let me give you an important caveat. A lot of would-be machine builders want to build to save money. They look at what finished CNC machines cost and it seems scary.

Now here is an ugly little secret–building a machine takes a long time, it’s a lot of work, and in the end you won’t have saved much money at all.

Wait!

I can already hear many of you rebelling against the notion that building your machine won’t save much money. Sorry to burst bubbles, but I’ve been there and done that. Not just once, but MANY times across many interests. It always starts out seeming like it will save. Once I got a little wiser about it, I rationalized it more as getting started sooner and paying as I went. That latter is closer to the truth.

Take a CNC Milling machine. I converted one from scratch. It took a huge amount of time, and in the end it cost me about $6000 all told. No, I didn’t have to pay that all up front, but you can buy a nice little Tormach for that price and be making parts right away.



That’s me, building CNCCookbook’s Shapeoko CNC Router Kit…