[Fixittt]

So I descided to get a 3040 router. let me first say that if you want an out of the box, onto the bench solution to start making acurate parts. This is not the line of machines to do it.

Here is the exact machine I got.
Amazon.com: ZJchao(TM) 4 Axis Router Engraver/engraving Pcb's Drilling and Milling Machine CNC 3040c Professional with Software

biggest disapointment was the acme screw on the Z axis. no where does it say ballscrews for X and Y acme for Z
So many problems... SOOOOOOOO MANY.

First off shipping damage was minimal compaired to some reviews I have seen. There is no way to ship a machine in this way and have it be square at the destination.
Got it out of the box and onto the desk. Electronics worked out of the box. Hooked it up to the USB UC100 . Had it moving in 10 minutes.
Move it did. But man was it bad when I tried to engrave something with a drag engraver I mad. The leters literally looked as if I had changed the font.

[Fixittt]

Electronics and the crappy steppers where not up to the lever that I wanted. So off they came.
new motors and electronics went on. Has to bore out a couple of lead screw couplers. The screws where turned to 8mm diameter while my motors have 1/4 diameter shafts. Z axis motor was a nema 17 belt driven, now It is direct coupled.
With the new motors and controller I was able to get over 7000 mm a min. While running a pocket wizard gcode without any missed steps. The whole desk was rocking.

The crapy spindle solution with this machine is a handheld flex shaft driven fordum clone. Yeah, that is not going to work. So I machined a NSK 2530 spindle mount.

This is where things started to get "Interesting" Now that I had something to hold a dial test I ran it across the bed surface. DAMN ITS WAVY!
The extruded aluminum Tslot bed surface is no where near flat or level.

Running an indicator from the right to the left at the forward most postion. There is a 1.8mm deviation in height. With that being said. I do not know yet if its the table or if the gantry is angled. I am sure it is alot of both!

[Fixittt]

So between the craptastic paint that is very uneven and flakes off if you breath on it, The burs on the holes on the underside of the table and the flatness of the table. This type of machine is simple poor.
Sure its not a high dollar machine and that is what I wanted. Something to tinker with and play with. I see a lot of questions on the zone and other places about these 3020, 3040 ect size machines.

If you are wanting an out of the box turn key solution, this is not what you want. The documentation was a printed out paper. hell even that looked as if the printer was low on ink.
No clear mach 3 setup. Old version of mach on a cd. The link in the add description takes you to terrible support doc.

I can see why a lot of people are having a hard time with setting these up.

[ZZRBlokey]

I must of been extremely lucky with mine then,
The day it arrived January last year the delivery man almost had a heart attack bringing mine to the door. As I cut through the cardboard box expecting those "crunchy whats it's" type packing to spill on to the hallway floor, I was greeted with a 9mm thick plywood chest, nailed shut as tight a a nun's, well you get the picture.
With a screwdriver to hand, opened the box with to be greeted with polystyrene ball packing sheets so tightly but thoughtfully packed, in, and around the machine, using a hover to suck up all the stray balls, as each bit of packing was removed, much to the delight of the missus, I managed to fill a full wheely bin with what came out of that box. and daft as it may sound I kept the box whole, and once I get it fully running I might put it back in the ply box, 3 sided of course, so swarf cant escape.

Yes as I have just posted else where, the manual is in "Chinglish" and it is only till now, ( free time from everday hassles since it arrived) that I am almost ready to start machining.

If you need a translator give me a shout, but looking at the mess that turned up in I would send it back, but be ready for a fight with the seller coz you'll be messaging the office in china.

[Fixittt]

I got the router running. But it had so many stupid problems that I had to tear it down and do some reworking to it.
The pain chips were bad, burs on almost all the parts. nothing was square. Support rails to hold the bottom square where thin L channel
She needed some help. Ohh and the paint had to go.

[ZZRBlokey]

So Fixittt,
I can only presume that, because you still have it and you have done all that work to it. that you did complain about its state on arrival, that you either got reimbursed the full amount or at lest half. and they werent prepared to organise collection. so you decided to rebuild it. ?????

[Fixittt]

The shipping damage was pretty minimal. Nothing I was worried about as I knew going into it that I would be redoing the machine. I had no desire to use the stock motors or controller as I knew out of the box they are sub par and would not work at all for my needs. I was just very suprised on how little of a structure there really was.

[jcarpenter2]

Well this is an older thread, but since this is the same CNC my wife just got me for Christmas i have read it with quite a bit of interest, especially since the issues Fixittt outlined are the same issues i am seeing on mine. I have a new controller and new steppers already. I solved the ballscrew size difference with a coupling that is 6.35x8, however, it is the lead screw for the Z axis i have a question of for Fixittt. The top of the Z axis lead screw is threaded, how did you go about fixing that in order to change it over to direct drive? The other question is more of an opinion, what size spindle do you think this would handle. Ive been looking on ebay but just not sure. My intent is to build a larger CNC someday, so everything i have upgraded to will actually be able to transfer over to a larger machine so i would prefer to buy a larger spindle, im just not sure how large to go on this machine.

[Fixittt]

Sorry for the long delay,
Dont know if you need the answers still, but I simply took the nut off and the bearing and raised the screw up to meet the new motor. Put a coupler on the shaft and all is well. The screw does not go all the way to the bottom bracket of the Z axis anymore, but its not a problem because the lead screw nut is at the top of the block.

[A_Camera]

Sorry for the long delay,
Dont know if you need the answers still, but I simply took the nut off and the bearing and raised the screw up to meet the new motor. Put a coupler on the shaft and all is well. The screw does not go all the way to the bottom bracket of the Z axis anymore, but its not a problem because the lead screw nut is at the top of the block.

So the Z axis lead screw coupler is actually on the threaded part of the screw? That does not seem to be a very good solution, at least according to my experience. The contact surface between the coupler and the lead screw is considerably less than if it was machined down properly.

Anyway, are you happy with the machine now? Is it working fine? Post some up to date pictures. I agree, getting rid of the paint was a good idea, personally I like the bare aluminium color better than painted, but it is a matter of taste. Never the less, if it is painted than it is important that the paint hold and allows handling and use of the machine.

[jcarpenter2]

Ive been working on this machine since Christmas when my wife gave it to me as a present. I have made so many changes based on reading a lot of the threads on this forum. I am just about complete and then I will post pics in this thread and show what ive done to get this up to speed. Keeping my fingers crossed to hopefully be able to run my first test drive with it this weekend. The only thing remaining that I do not like is the flex in the axis but unless im willing to scrap the whole thing to get rid of those rails and change over to supported rails there isn't much I can do about that. And, at that point there won't be anything left of the original machine.

I have to take my hat off to all you cnc people. Talk about a learning curve, from the basic mechanics, to the cad programing, to the gcoding, to the vfd. It is a substantial amount of knowledge that is required especially as a "hobby machine" where you may not have the support of knowledgeable fellow employees to help with this vast range of knowledge that is required to run a cnc.

[Fixittt]

Glad to see your still working with/on it. I hear you about the flex in the machine. That is why I refer to it as the noodle router. I do have some large supported rails on the shelf and some bearings. I soo will be doing the overhaul that you are referring to.
Dont sell the machine short, its a great, fun be it limited tool especially when you ditch the stock motors and electronics.

Yes, I even used it to make a 3D print head that fits on the router to use it as a 3D printer.

If you need any help, dont hesitate to scream at me.

here is the status of my router as it sits today.
https://youtu.be/4yyFKL-QiQk

it maybe a wet noodle, but I do have alot of fun with it. With engraving, its great. I have done other projects with it that I surprised me with the outcome.
Cutting vinyl records.
https://youtu.be/qfqflI_RfQ8

Cutting ear rings out of CD disc
https://youtu.be/_BwkbA3ObsI

[jcarpenter2]

Well here are my pics. The wife bought me the same machine Fixittt had and this shows all the changes i made. Every bit of the wiring was changed out and i ran a Fluke on everything ensuring i got good tone. So far so good and i have jogged it, but have not yet ran my first cut. Here are some overview pictures. The first thing i did was dissemble every nut, bolt and screw, then I stripped every bit of paint using a paint stripper as the original paint was atrocious, and one thing Fixittt didnt mention was the drips. I have not yet worked the 4th axis but it wont sit on a flat surface because the runs are so bad. Once it was striped i repainted everything using an etching primer to ensure good adhesion. Attachment 306334Attachment 306336Attachment 306338

[jcarpenter2]

Now to show some of my fixes/changes. Most pictures give a brief description of what i did to fix the errors Fixitt mentioned. As you can see along with the fixes i ended up changing out the whole z-axis, though i am still not a 100% satisfied with that. The spindle is a 1.5kw water cooled spindle with a vfd. I added home switches which i still have a bit more to do to get them up to speed. I worked with Storm 2313 and he built me a gecko controller using the gecko 540 in order to get rid of the chinese controller. There was no shielded wiring originally and the used a 12 pin connector, of course that was changed out for DB9 connectors and all shielded wire with grounding. On my cables i also used the SOI-EZ-G540 which uses a trimpot so if i swap motors latter on i just trim to the resistor setting and keep driving on. I also really like those nema back covers as it makes a much cleaner install. Ill keep you all updated once i actually get this fired up and running.

[Fixittt]

Looks great. I could not tell it was painted.

I have plans to make a new Z axis as well. Hoping to use rails and bearing trucks for the X and Z.

I little sneak peak at an upgrade

[Fixittt]

First impressions of the Ugra Spindle. https://youtu.be/yk9zZxjicss

[Fixittt]

Mounted the 1HP spindle to the router, cut some pine and MDF........ Had a great time doing it and got wonderful results.

Made some custom VW 6x9 speaker grills.

[SteveS]

I saw this machine on eBay for $1800 and came here to see any reviews. It seems each of reviewers have changed the steppers, what were the issues with the original steppers? My plans were to go with a G540 and Mach3 anyway to avoid the foreign language software and use something I had familiarity with.

Actually I have a desktop of similar dimensions that was manufactured in Florida around 2005 from a German design that I have completely replace all electronics and some mechanical on. My big interest in the China eBay machine was that I am limited to 40 ipm on my current machine due to the cogged belt between each side of the X axis. What ipm are you getting with these machines after upgrades.

Seems that the $1,800 grows another $1,000 before you have them up to snuff along with a lot of labor. At that point there could be other viable options including complete new build.

Steve.

[jcarpenter2]

Originally my wife bought the 3040 for me and with very little knowledge of cncs I decided to some research prior to receiving it. I read about all the deficiencies of those cncs and actually had most of the replacement items and started the rebuild without actually even firing it up. I will say, the original steppers are small and if you plan on doing any aluminum work or even hard wood, I don't think they will be able to handle it. If it had to do it all over I would buy a barebones cnc Eufree 3040 CNC Router Aluminium Frame Milling Machine Mechanical Kit Ball Screw | eBay and then buy all the components that are more up to speed. Beats having a box of left over "stuff" like I do that will more than likely never be used.

[Fixittt]

Steve, Mine was only $800 ish. It was for a project I had to do. The wire and the electronics (controller boards) suck out of the box especially with only a 24v power supply. A G 540 with the stock motors would make it run so much better. I happen to have larger motors on the shelf. Made sense in my case.

I knew what I was getting into before I ever received the package.
I put a bit better controller on mine, with .8 degree steppers to gain back mechanical resolution. I will say that I have so much fun with the machine now. The new 1 HP spindle has opened the doors. Its still flimsy bue to the unsupported linear shafts, but that is in the works. I still love running it though.