| Planning and building a DIY CNC router | Page 1 |
| Why build a CNC router at all? | Page 1 |
| Important questions you need to answer for yourself. | Page 1 |
| 0. Preface | Page 2 |
| 1. Material | Page 2 |
| 2. Travel ranges | Page 2 |
| 3. Drive | Page 2 |
| 4. Control | Page 2 |
| 5. Construction type | Page 2 |
| Drive types and linear guides | Page 3 |
|
Pros and cons of the individual drives |
Page 3 |
|
Linear guides |
Page 3 |
Drive types and linear guides
Worth mentioning here are
- Timing belt
- Threaded rod
- Trapezoidal lead screw
- Ball screw
- Rack and pinion
Pros and cons of the individual drives
| No. | Advantages | Disadvantages |
| 1 |
inexpensive relatively easy installation |
low precision under high loads |
| 2 | very inexpensive |
inaccurate more complex effort to reduce backlash |
| 3 |
inexpensive fast relatively easy installation |
less effort than a threaded rod to reduce backlash |
| 4 |
quite fast very accurate |
Expensive |
| 5 |
very fast, especially for long travel distances |
more complex effort to eliminate backlash |
My personal favorite is the ball screw. However, setups with rack and pinion are also planned for the future. This makes 10 m/min or more achievable — a real added value, especially with long travel distances and rapid moves.
For DIY routers, I recommend ball screws or at least trapezoidal lead screws.
Vevor has a set consisting of 3 ball screws + bearing blocks and 6 linear guides at an unbeatable price.
Vevor 3-axis linear guide set with ball screws and bearing blocks*
Affiliate link
This set is used in the router shown on page 1. For the price, you sometimes don’t even get a single ball screw.
Linear guides
As mentioned above, linear guides are another key to precision. A ball screw is useless if the carriage isn’t guided properly. Personally, I’m not a big fan of designs with tubes and ball bearings — but that’s a matter of taste.
Worth mentioning here are classic supported round rails or profile rails. The latter, however, are many times more expensive.
A comparison between supported round rails and profile rails in 1 m length shows a factor of almost 3.
| Set of 2 supported round rails 1 m | approx. 74€ |
| Set of 2 profile rails 1 m | approx. 200€ |