Santa's Workshop

I get a red one! :thumbsup: :band: :cornut: :arf:

I didn't buy a complete turnkey CNC setup. I started with manual machines that were CNC ready. CNC ready means they have mounts on the machine for the stepper motors, but the motors and electronics to drive the CNC are not included. Here is the package I have for the basic machines. I bought these 10 years ago and used them completely manually for the first 5 years.

http://www.sherlinedirect.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&Product_ID=749

Later I pieced together the CNC control system myself. Bought and installed the control stepper motors. Put together the drive electronics using Gecko G201 drivers. http://www.geckodrive.com/ I use EMC as the control software running on a linux based PC. http://linuxcnc.org/

I didn't buy the turnkey Sherline CNC setup because it came out after I bought the mill and lathe. But it's pretty similar to what I have. So if you want a turnkey solution it would be a lot less work to go with this. I did spend less money putting my system together, but it was a ton of work.

http://www.sherlinedirect.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&Product_ID=190

In hindsight, it was a really good path to use the machine manually for quite a while before getting into CNC. You have to know how to manually machine to be successful at CNC. CNC just lets you feed the all the machining operations into a computer to make the process repeatable and automated. You still have to know what the proper machining operations are with appropriate feed rates, depths of cut, and spindle speeds. I'm not sure how you'd know that without knowing how to do manual machining.