DIY 5-AXIS CNC

Aside from the Pocket NC there is currently no 5-Axis CNC on the hobby market, as far as i know. with a 200w Spindle and leadscrews and so on its lacking in features and i wasn´t read to pay close to 7000€ for it.

So the next best option was to build my own, as my graduation project from my school, the higher technical college Mödling (https://htl.moedling.at/) So i started to design my own with a bigger workarea, better components and a way more powerful spindle. Add to that a stiffer frame, a proper enclosure a touchprobe, and a tool-length-sensor and a powerful open source Software like fluid NC.

In the end i got a WAY better mill for a lower price, and a fun & challenging project to do in my free time. And a graduation project i could acsually use , once finished.

And since i really like the concept of open source Projects like the PrintNC ot the Voron printers, i´ll do the same and put all Information, CAD-Files, Drawings and Software setup on GitHub so that others can build a 5-Axis mill themselves and make their crazy ideas reality.

Aside from the big custom parts made from aluminium and some specific parts for the trunnion tableall the other parts are really easy to sióurce.

So if you decide to make the aluminium parts yourself you will need a cnc, but most CNC routers that will cul aluminium will work, but you need a workarea of around 400x 400 mm.

You also will need access to a lathe to make some t parts for the Trunnion table.

But these custom machined parts are held to a minimunm. If you dont have access to those tools, you can just outsource them via Xometry or some other service.

Aside from that you just need the basics. Allen keys, screwdrivers for the electronics, and some other basic stuff, wich you probably already have in your shop, if you are seriosly thinking about building a project at this scale.

First Step in the process of the manufacturing of the Mill was the design Phase. Since this is my graduation project to finish high school, this was split between me and a classmate of mine. Our goal was to fit the Mill on most desktops and in even the smallest of Workshops. The other goals were:

1) it runs on 230V/13A wich is the standart european circuts, and i dont have more than this in my workshop.

2) easy manufacturing to save costs in the building Process and enable it to be built by people without a well equipt shop

3) a Construction with a highly rigid frame to cut aluminium, brass and titanium effeciently and enable small scale production runs

4) a maximum Budget of 5000€ which is still chaeper than some dektop 3axis cnc`s

5) all electronics are housed within the Mills enclosure to prevent damage to the wireing and electronics when moving the cnc

The 2nd Step was ordering all the Components and the aluminium stock for the custom machined parts, wich is the part that hurt my wallet

most were bought on Amazon or ebay and are cheap chinese counterparts to namebrand components. I will report back after some time wich ones work and wich ones are worth to spend more money on and get the name brand components.

The next Step was acsually starting to build the CNC. We startet with the Frame out of standart 4040 and 4080 Aluminium extrusions, held together with a rediciolus amount of 90° angles and "blind joints " with t-nuts,

the Frame is made of Extrusions because a) they are verry easy to get, and b) they are even easier to work with and can be adjusted slightly for perfect 90° angles between the differnt axies of the mill

it might be overkill to add this many braces in the frame, but better save than sorry, and a rigid frame is the base for a good CNC mill. By the way, try to overbuild the frame, its the hardest part to upgreade once you have a mill, on the other hand a spindel can be changed in less than 2 hours. A frame will take for sure longer than that.

We generally tried to use as many Off-the-shelf parts as possible, but we still hat to custom make some ourselfs. Most parts were Quite simple, bought the Stock for the parts already cut to size, and printed a lage drawing of the parts, glued it on and used it to drill all the holes, but some are NOT YET modeled in CAD as i changed some things to properly work as intended.

For the more complicated parts we needed a more precise way to make them. In School we attend, You also learn the basics of machining. If you ask me thats the coolest part. So after 3 months of internships (and some convincing of my parents) i finally bought myself a small CNC Mill. Aside frome other Projects this also came in clutch on this one, most components were milled at home in my basement

And here is where fusion comes into play. All the CAM was done on a fusion 360 student licence, in the picture you can see the CAM for the adapter-plate between X and Z axis. its all quite basic adaptive, contour and bore milling, but verry intuitive and ensures the absolute Precision thats needed to ensure a smooth operation and (not less important) assembly

But some parts exceeded the 300x220 work envelope of my small machine,but since we are students at a higher Technical college in Austria we werer fortunate enough to have access to a big industrial CNC Mill made by EMCO

And while its nearly as old as I am, it still makes parts more than good enough for our usecase. Huge shoutout to our CNC class teacher who helped us manufacture the parts.

Most Parts fit flawlessly and we hadn't had to scrap a single part, wich is a testiment to the good CAD work my team did. Some parts needed slight adjustments, because not all the CAD models were an exact copy of the acsual parts we got from China, but nothing major. Most parts screwed right to the frame and since we arent in the US its Metric hardware only. For further Information on the building material you can look at the provided list, but i didnt count every single screw, that would result in more work than building this thing.

Probably the best Feature in Fusion 360 is the verry accurate simulation of Toolpaths. You can detect chrashes before the happen in real life and get a better feeling for how the machine will move. This is probably the reason why you see guys like John from NYC CNC and John from Grimsmo Kinves using this feature in almost every Video. And if its good enough to make parts to the incredibly tight tolerances and keep production machines from chrashing that cost 6-7 digit amounts of Dollars it is for sure good enough for me :)

Also once you have a accurate model of your machine it only takes about half an hour to set it up, so its really a thing i`d reccomend to all fusion users. I highly reccomend the Youtube videos fusion published, without them i would have taken to figure out all the options that must be ticked. The only thing i changed is, i removed all parts that are not needed to visualise the machining of parts like the Enclosure and so on, since my computer is not taht powerful and performes way better this way

I've linked a small example of a Toolpath i simulated

This is still a work in Progress, it took a lot longer and a lot more money than i expected, so we are still in the assembly process of the mill. The CAD Part, the maching of parts is already complete, the assebly, electronics and testing will follow soon ill be back to complete the documentation, id expect it will be finished in spring of '24, because thats when i have to hand it in as my graduation project. thats what it is after all.

I'm stll debating if i will publish it as a gitHub or not, because it took a lot of work and money to pull this through. If i would be able to put this up for 10-15$ on my Etsy store it would enable me to release Projects like this on a more regular basis, since i'd have a way to fund projects like this, at least a small Part. I'd like to hear Your opinion on this idea, and if you wold be willing to buy the plans if your are really thinking of replicating my mill ?