ChicoBox — TinyBee CNC Controller + Open‑Source FluidNC Pendant

Welcome to my rabbit hole...
wait.

Welcome to the Machine I did not mean to create.



This whole thing started as a simple “that aluminum case looks cool, I should buy it and do something with it later.” Which, of course, turned into a homemade CNC controller, a custom pendant, custom firmware, custom boards, addressable status lights, aluminum machining, heatsinks, wiring, and several future project branches I absolutely did not ask for.

This project spiraled, grew legs, and is still evolving.

At its core, this is a homemade CNC controller built around an MKS TinyBee running FluidNC. The controller uses a Waveshare 4.3-inch 800x480 screen as the pendant, running custom firmware that I’m currently writing to operate and monitor the CNC.



The body is all aluminum. Some parts, like the outer shell and inputs, came from a local surplus store. Everything else was designed, modified, or machined on my CNC. Inside, it has four external drivers for X, Y, Z, and A with custom-made heatsinks, plus one StepStick driver for the fifth axis, B. All axes can also be bypassed and driven externally if needed.

There are also homemade boards for the addressable LED status lights, controlled by another ESP32 running a modified WLED setup with custom usermods. The lights react to the machine's status because, apparently, just getting the controller to work wasn’t enough.

The pendant firmware is being built around the Waveshare ESP32-S3 screen first. Once that version is complete, I plan to make it open-source and modular, then expand support to other boards and chipsets so it can be used on different CNC setups.

And because this project has apparently become contagious, I already have two future forks in mind. One is designing my own CNC controller PCB, which honestly feels less scary now that I’ve made a few smaller boards. The other is much more unhinged: eventually building my own HAL or GRBL-style CNC and laser controller to replace FluidNC and start creating my own full ecosystem from there.

I MEANT TO DO NONE OF THAT.

This all started because I went to my local surplus store and found these cool-looking aluminum cases. I had no real plan. I just knew they were milled, probably expensive to make, and too interesting to leave behind. I figured maybe I’d turn them into display boxes or some random future project.

Then things slowly spiraled from there.

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This is a living build log, which means it will keep changing as the project grows, breaks, gets fixed, and somehow turns into three more projects. More updates coming soon.