Build your own CNC Mill or Lathe!

Posted 15 years, 10 months ago 26 comments

Are you looking to build your own Desktop or Benchtop CNC machine, but feeling intimidated by the minefield of products and design issues involved? We're here to help!

We aim to make it easy to build your own small, heavy duty high precision CNC Mill or Lathe. We'll be offering plans with full specifications that can be scaled up or down as required, advice, and a range of parts to make it as straightforward and economical as possible. You can source the parts yourself, or we can supply as much or as little as you need, including linear motion hardware, servos, servo drives and PC interface options.

We aim to make all our designs able to be built with no more than basic hand tools and a manual milling machine. Any parts requiring specialised tools will be offered for purchase on www.zealcnc.com. Obviously, as you are the builder of your machine, the final product will reflect your abilities and the effort invested, but by following the build log and being realistic about your skill level you should be able to end up with a machine that is capable of producing high quality parts for a long time.

Keep an eye on this space, or subscribe to our RSS feed to be notified of updates! We will be logging each build as it happens, plans and parts will be available to purchase as soon as each machine is completed and tested.

CNC for everyone!

Comments

oliver HuÃŸmann

15 years, 8 months ago

Pleace mail me when the plan are availbe i am very interested

Victor

15 years, 7 months ago

Yeah, I am interested also. can you email me the plans?

Victor

15 years, 7 months ago

My email is mechanicleez@yahoo.com

ZealCNC

15 years, 7 months ago

Thanks for your interest! We'll make the plans available once we've built and thoroughly tested a mill built from our drawings - we've made some significant design changes from the prototypes, and need to confirm everything will go together and work as expected.

We're expecting to start this machine in the next day or two: http://zealcnc.wordjot.co.nz/posts/a-slightly-larger-machine/ - subscribers will get an update as soon as we do.

Best regards,

Jason

Todd

15 years, 5 months ago

Jason,
Do you have any pictures of your mill build that your building from the plans?

Todd

ZealCNC

15 years, 5 months ago

Hi Todd,

The benchtop one? There's a log started here: http://zealcnc.wordjot.co.nz/posts/the-bench-top-mill-build-part-1-the-base/

The desktop one is still coming, I'm working on improving the design - hoping to have something to show soon.

Best regards,

Jason

Todd

15 years, 5 months ago

Thanks Jason,

Right now I was looking at the desktop one. Have to start out small and work my way up. I was looking for more pictures of the desktop mill if you had any.

Todd

The Slim Shady

15 years, 4 months ago

Please can you eMail me the plans for this Mill?
send them to:
kingoftheskies@windowslive.com
thanks

NZ

-The Slim Shady-

The Slim Shady

15 years, 4 months ago

Please can you eMail me the plans for this Mill?
send them to:
kingoftheskies@windowslive.com
thanks

NZ

-The Slim Shady-

Andrew

15 years, 3 months ago

Hi there Jason, very nice, clean design, I'm very impressed. I was think about going with the Sieg SX2 or SX3 & cnc them until I found this site. I'm looking forward to the plans!

ZealCNC

15 years, 3 months ago

Sorry all, for the lack of progress or updates. We had a death in the family, and the events leading up to and following have significantly slowed us down.
Hopefully we'll be able to show something new soon.
Best regards,
Jason

Dave L

15 years, 2 months ago

Sorry to hear of your loss, condolences to you and your family. Any chance of some plans. dave.lowe@chh.com

Thanks

Dave L

15 years, 2 months ago

Sorry to hear of your loss, condolences to you and your family. Any chance of some plans. dave.lowe@chh.com

Thanks

Mike Pearson

15 years ago

Jason, hope you keep moving with this version, it is a very attractive size and performance. Keen to see any plans or CADA data you may have available. Keen for you to supply me with a kit of bits based on the Granite drives and I can get building the machine. Mike

Mike Pearson

15 years ago

Jason
If using an E3000 spindle does it need to use the NSK controller or can it be controlled by the machine?
Mike

ZealCNC

15 years ago

Thanks Mike, I'll be in touch. At this point we haven't got another solution to replace the NSK spindle drive, but we are working on it. We're hoping NSK will release their new 1 Kw, 40 mm diameter spindle soon, as it seems to have a lot of promise as an ideal spindle for these machines. Best regards,
Jason

Ang

14 years, 10 months ago

Hi, I m Ang from Malaysia. I m very interested for the cnc mill plan. Can email to me? design.hawk@gmail.com

Thanks in advance.
Ang

14 years, 3 months ago

looks like he is sleeping on the idea :)

Nick

14 years ago

Hi. Just like to say that I think you are doing a really great job on these. They are not too small and not too big. Just a really good usefull size. Something with a rigid platform and a bit of grunt. From all my searches on the net there seems to be a big hole in the market for machines this size. They seem to be either great big industry size machines or piddly little things only good for model making. So great job, an inspiration.

Jason

14 years ago

Thanks Nick!

I appreciate the comments. Really time I got the drawings finished for these, they're not especially difficult to build, and they work well.

Regards,

Jason

Gokhan

13 years, 10 months ago

Hello from Turkey

Jason Really great job!!!
Congratulations

JOZE VAUPOTIC

11 years, 9 months ago

Please can you eMail me the plans for this Mill?
send them to:
slimline67@gmail.com

thanks

Joe Rowlands-Conway

11 years, 9 months ago

Hey I don't know how often this site is updated or used anymore. I'm really interested in making the small desktop mill. Do plans exist?? Can I get a copy?? Please message me back if u get this as zealcnc.com just redirects to a website that lists other vaguely cnc related sites. I'd ideally like to buy a kit of parts. Email Jconway651@aol.com
Thanks in advance

Old Raft

11 years, 9 months ago

Is this site/your project still alive. I'm really interested in building a milling machine and this sounds ideal.

Regards

Old....

Jason

11 years, 9 months ago

Hi there. I don't have plans for these ones unfortunately - they worked very well but were never quite finished. There's more photos here: http://zealcnc.wordjot.com/posts/a-new-desktop-mill/ just in case you haven't seen those.

I did do some newer, bigger machines. There's a couple of videos on my youtube channel. Look for 'DeskMC' in the title for the newer one: http://www.youtube.com/user/zealcnc

The same machine operating a bit faster can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jkMYEZh-w4

The 4th generation design is done but I haven't released anything on it yet as a decision hasn't been made on it's future. It may be available as a complete machine, or a kit set or both. we'll make a decision once we have built and tested it.

Kind regards,

Jason

Anton

11 years, 7 months ago

I am really interested, please email me anton8@gmail.com. I would like to build a lathe and a mill, i build laser modules so would be perfect. I am not happy with the BF20 that i got. So its time to do something else.

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