I am Making a DIY Clone of the CNC 3018

I recently built a CNC 3018 Pro for someone and blogged about it.  Now I have decided to rebuild my home made CNC to be like the 3018.

This picture compares the two machines side by side.

To be honest it would be cheaper to buy the kit on eBay.  I figured I had most of the parts so it would be cheaper but that is not the case!  If you bought all of the parts it would cost you over $200 and you can get the kit on eBay for around $140-150.

This picture shows how I wired the 3018 CNC

CNC 3018 wiring

 Using larger sized limit switches with a piece of 2" by 1" angle aluminum.

 More limit switch pictures.  I had a limit switch that had a sideways lever for the Z axis.

 Close up of smaller limit switches.  I could only get one screw because of the Allen screw that tightens against the rod.  I should have put the switch on the other side so the rods can be removed.

The controller board needs lots of repairs and even a software fix. You need to add pull up resistors to the inputs of the Pololu A4988 Stepper controllers.  Don't forget to remove the jumpers on the other side of the board as well.  Then you will need to add filter caps to D9, D10 and D12. The board has D11 as the Z axis limit switch but GRBL will use D12 instead.  D11 is used for the spindle control relay or transistor.  In software the "Step" and "Direction" pins are all swapped and need to be swapped back.  There are several web sites that tell how to do that.