My brother has been working on a portable machine he can set on a surface and carve. Here are a few pictures of his first attempt at carving on a table top that he found someone was throwing away. Sorry for the low quality phone pics Mark
good effort but the outside looks a bit "clumpy", is it the nature of these types of CNC machines to do rough curves like that or can the software be tweaked to improve the smoothness of the cuts?
A great idea which has surfaced on a recent KickStarter campaign (not using any V-slot or such). It does need a non damaging method of fixing the machine to work surface. Maybe some form of clamps instead of screws. It might help doing cleaner cuts/milling ? The OX is capable of better quality, these initial somewhat rought trials are to get the kinks out of the idea, right ? Would love to get an update on this build ...
He (my brother) uses it pretty much everyday making signs and such for their shop. He loves to build and CNC and so he had the idea of making his machine portable so he can bring it to a customer and do custom carvings on the spot. Its really a neat idea and I believe the concept could be used on many machine designs.
I was inspired by this build to do something similar with a Laser engraver. I have started the build using 20X40 vslot with a footprint of 750mmX750mm. It is light enough to be portable and can be place over just about any surface to engrave. As it is a non contact tool (laser beam) there is no need to clamp it to the work piece. It will also be able to carry a small 300W air cooled spindle, in that scenario, I will need to figure out a way of clamping it to the work piece without marring the surface.
