If you're into 3D printing, then you surely have a 3D printer and a stash of unused, spare hardware such as nuts and bolts or aluminium frame pieces. With this project, you can make use of these parts by building your very own, miniature CNC laser.
You'll need:
- 5 2020 aluminium extrusion frame pieces (3 and 2 of the same lengths, these lengths will map directly to your X and Y axis lengths),
- a bunch of M3, M4, M5 and M6 bolts,
- a few M5 nuts, self-locking type preferrably,
- a shovel of M4 T-nuts (you can print those and use regural M4 nuts instead),
- 3 16T/20T timing pulleys,
- 12 nylon drive pulleys,
- a matching drive belt (length depends on your frame pieces),
- cable ties, lots of them,
- a few meters of cabling (CAT 5e twisted pair seems to work nicely for this purpose),
- 3 NEMA17 motors,
- a controller board (for example, Arduino with a CNC shield or any other GRBL-compatible board),
- a laser module, obviously.
Additionally, you'll need to print:
- 8 feet/corner brackets,
- 8 belt tensioners without a cable passthrough,
- 4 belt tensioners with a cable passthrough,
- 2 Y-axis pulley assemblies,
- 1 X-axis pulley assembly,
- 2 lefty pulley tensioners,
- 2 righty pulley tensioners,
- 1 tool plate (the default mounting hole spacing matches the common Chinese laser diode modules).
If you want to use an EleksMaker Mana SE module for controlling this thing you can print:
- a cover plate with the button hole (and optionally with the fan hole as well),
- a cover plate without any extra holes.
- gather your spare hardware,
- print additional parts,
- ???
- PROFIT!