“Hi, I’m Caleb, I’m a student at the University of Texas @ Austin studying Mechanical Engineering.
Almost 2 years ago now I built my CNC (MPCNC) for about $600 dollars. It has been a super great experience that I highly recommend for any aspiring engineers like myself. I have racked up 1000’s of hours cutting time over a 100’s of projects. It has served me well and allowed me to do many wood projects that I never expected I would be able to do.
Recently I have wanted to expand the capabilities of my CNC router even more to be able to do projects around a rotary axis. My main inspiration for this project was to make a custom set of chess pieces for my brother. In this instructables I will show you my budget hardware as well as the process I invented to carve rotary objects with basic, free CAM software.
Supplies:
- Tools: CNC machine, Lathe (a normal wood lathe is nice for preparing stock), 3D printer (for printing parts)
- Hardware: Nema17 stepper motor (with wire), Coupler adapter
- Software: Fusion360, Blender, Scorchworks gcode ripper (not really needed)
- Consumables: Wood (maple and mahogany)”