CNC router engraver with GRBL?
Discussion
I have a small one that I got about 4 years ago that I use for drilling and milling PCBs. It was about twice as expensive as that then. I tried it with perspex, but the drill speed isn't fast enough. I upgraded the GRBL to 1.1 from 0.8 earlier this year.
I have a half-built home-designed (and made) version that should do 6U panel milling and engraving in aluminium when finished. The stepper motors were from another machine I started some 20 years ago, but everything else is brand new.
I did build another one about 13 years ago that had a 1.5m square bed, and moved at 18m/minute with an accuracy of 0.05mm. But it was too big for my home, so sold it and it was converted into a CNC plasma cutter. It predated GRBL though...
I have a half-built home-designed (and made) version that should do 6U panel milling and engraving in aluminium when finished. The stepper motors were from another machine I started some 20 years ago, but everything else is brand new.
I did build another one about 13 years ago that had a 1.5m square bed, and moved at 18m/minute with an accuracy of 0.05mm. But it was too big for my home, so sold it and it was converted into a CNC plasma cutter. It predated GRBL though...
GRBL itself is fine; the main alternative to GRBL is something like Mach3, or LinuxCNC (which is what my very large one used).
GRBL is a bit limiting due to the fact that it's an Arduino Nano/Uno-based platform; adding a 4th axis is a little more complicated (it certainly won't be something that your £150 device would support). There's a couple of projects that add in the 4th axis to GRBL, but it's different hardware. Its main advantage is that the Gerber files are just sent to the machine, and it interprets them.
There are different versions of GRBL - I started with 0.8, but I wanted to control a laser as well, so upgraded it to 1.1. Unfortunately while it had a standard Arduino Nano on it, the manufacturer of the board used a non-standard pin-out for it, and had a custom version of GRBL. Swapping the controller board with one that used a standard pin-out was much easier than recompiling the code (I am an embedde systems programmer, but I really don't like the Arduino infrastructure).
In terms of functionality, I didn't really see a lot of difference between 0.8 and 1.1 (except for the laser control). The only software that had a problem with it was one I'd written myself for drilling PCBs.
Note that GRBL version 1.1h was released in 2019; the previous version (1.1f) was in 2017, so it's fairly well-established.
Mach3/LinuxCNC uses the PC to interpret the Gerber files, and controls the stepper motors directly while monitoring the limit points. I think it can also control more than 4 axes fairly easily. Traditionally it interfaced via the PC's printer port (and additional printer ports could be added to give more I/O capability), but I've not looked at the latest capabilities.
For your machine, the main problem will be the speed of the spindle. Anything too slow and it won't really have a lot of bite to do much.
The (small) one I bought has a maximum speed of about 1,200RPM; the one I'm building has a maximum speed of 10,000RPM. I bought the small one with a view to getting it to make bits for a larger version, although my 3D printer has done more work on it than the CNC machine.
GRBL is a bit limiting due to the fact that it's an Arduino Nano/Uno-based platform; adding a 4th axis is a little more complicated (it certainly won't be something that your £150 device would support). There's a couple of projects that add in the 4th axis to GRBL, but it's different hardware. Its main advantage is that the Gerber files are just sent to the machine, and it interprets them.
There are different versions of GRBL - I started with 0.8, but I wanted to control a laser as well, so upgraded it to 1.1. Unfortunately while it had a standard Arduino Nano on it, the manufacturer of the board used a non-standard pin-out for it, and had a custom version of GRBL. Swapping the controller board with one that used a standard pin-out was much easier than recompiling the code (I am an embedde systems programmer, but I really don't like the Arduino infrastructure).
In terms of functionality, I didn't really see a lot of difference between 0.8 and 1.1 (except for the laser control). The only software that had a problem with it was one I'd written myself for drilling PCBs.
Note that GRBL version 1.1h was released in 2019; the previous version (1.1f) was in 2017, so it's fairly well-established.
Mach3/LinuxCNC uses the PC to interpret the Gerber files, and controls the stepper motors directly while monitoring the limit points. I think it can also control more than 4 axes fairly easily. Traditionally it interfaced via the PC's printer port (and additional printer ports could be added to give more I/O capability), but I've not looked at the latest capabilities.
For your machine, the main problem will be the speed of the spindle. Anything too slow and it won't really have a lot of bite to do much.
The (small) one I bought has a maximum speed of about 1,200RPM; the one I'm building has a maximum speed of 10,000RPM. I bought the small one with a view to getting it to make bits for a larger version, although my 3D printer has done more work on it than the CNC machine.
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