$600 · Custom made CNC Router/3D Printer

Im in the process of making custom cnc routers/3d printers. The bed size for the cnc will be aprox 500x600mm with an travel depth of 30-40mm for the router head. The router can be removed and replaced with a 3d printer head that has a printable area of 300x500x600mm (pretty big for a 3d printer... but when I looked at making it smaller the cost difference was pretty small). The actual head can actually be a router, 3d extruder, plasma cutter, engraver, laser engraver, laser cutter and pen (for writting and drawing). The cost for the basic system without a head (well, it will have a bracket for a dremel as thats what Im using right away) would be ~$600. If you want the 3d printer head and heated printer bed it would cost $100. If you want to use it for heavier cnc milling the stepper motors would probably need to be upgraded which is around ~$50-100. Ive included a 3d design of the device. There are some modifications... only the bottom x axis has supported linear guides to support the gantry. The other 2 axis just have regular guide rods. The supported rods are 12mm and the rest are 8mm However, if you feel like it needs to be beefed up (ie, heaver router) then all the rods can be supported or increased in size fairly easily. The second change is that there are no belts or pulleys. Each motor directly turns a lead screw for better precision and more torque. The frame is made of square tube steel and will be either painted or powder coated. All electronics are opensource, are arduino based, and there are many great free software packages that will work with this. such as FreeCAM, sketchup, and slic3r, but anything that will spit out g-code will work. There are a number of electronic upgrades that can be added including an lcd and controls (currently everything is controlled with a host such as a computer or android device like a phone) and/or sd card reader so you can just load your files into the machine without hooking up a host. If you have any questions feel free to ask. If you know anyone that might be interested please pass along