I am brand new to all of this and am jumping into this feet first. Here is a little of what I just purchased as a starter cnc machine, I hope it will get me going.

This is a modified Harbor Freight mini-mill. It has been converted to CNC control. The lead screws have all been replaced with helical ball screws and bearings for zero backlash. The hardware to make the conversion was purchased from CNC Fusion with the addition of the helical ball screws and preloaded ballnuts.

The gear motor drive has been replaced with Little Machine Shop's belt drive conversion kit.


The controller is from Automation Technology and has the Gecko G540 4 axis controller in it which has 10 micro steps. The stepper motors are Nema 23's from Lin Engineering. They are 1.8 degree stepped and are wired for bipolar operation but can be wired for unipolar operation as well. They have 8 wires and Lin Engineering's website has a wiring diagram for wiring them either way.

Included is mini-itx computer and monitor, mouse, keyboard with Windows 7 that I used to control the machine. A registered version of Mach 3 is also included. This is a turn key solution, ready to start milling. Some end mills are also included.




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