I didn't start this project because I needed a CNC machine. I started it because I wanted to stop buying things I could build — and fix — myself.
The whole machine was designed from scratch in Shapr3D, working through the frame, the gantry, and the axis mounts iteration after iteration. Before a single piece of metal or plywood was cut, every bracket and joint was proven on a 3D printer first: printed, mounted, loaded, and pushed until I could see exactly where it flexed or failed, then sent back to the model to fix it. Parts carrying real load were tested in a stronger reinforced filament before committing to anything permanent.
Designing the machine was one curve. Learning the actual market for the parts that move it was a steeper one — ballscrews, stepper motors, bearings, aluminium extrusion, and controller boards each turned out to hide more variation than expected, and every category meant its own crash course before I trusted a single order.
The honest answer is that I want to build my own furniture, and eventually, my own camper van. Both are projects where buying off-the-shelf doesn't get you what you actually want — the dimensions never quite fit the space, the materials are chosen for cost instead of durability, and when something breaks, you're stuck replacing it instead of fixing it. A CNC machine is the tool that makes those projects possible with real precision.
But building the machine itself, from scratch, was also the point. I wanted to understand the tool completely — every screw, every axis, every failure mode — before trusting it with the furniture I'll live with, or the interior of a van I'll actually travel in.
This project sits on a simple belief: things should be designed to be repaired, not replaced. Every part of the machine uses standard, off-the-shelf hardware — no proprietary fasteners, no parts you can only get from one manufacturer. If a component wears out or breaks, it can be reprinted, re-machined, or swapped without throwing away the whole system.
Prototyping in plastic before cutting real material also meant far less wasted wood and metal along the way. Sustainability isn't a slogan here — it's a design constraint I held myself to at every stage, from the first sketch to the last cut on the finished machine.