# Anyone have experience with Open Build CNC kits?



## halfmoon

The title question says it all. I'm intrigued with CNC but want to keep the cost down. The videos guiding the builds look really thorough, I'm comfortable building stuff, though the digital part of things can be frustrating. Wondering if anyone else has put one together.


----------



## Lazyman

No experience with them but I was looking pretty hard at them a couple of years ago. Their forum has pretty good info so personally I thought that it would be a good entry level option for sort of ready made DIY solution.

I also looked pretty close at Millright.com for a lower cost option that is a little closer to a ready to go machine . They were getting rave reviews and had some pretty impressive demos for a low cost machine. Their production line is quite a bit more sophisticated now then it was when I was thinking about them.

And if you really want a DIY machine, check out the Woodsmith CNC project.

The main reason I never went down any of these paths is that I lucked into a CNC Shark at a garage sale that was assembled but never used that the guy sold for about 1/3 what he paid for it.


----------



## rizzo

I have an x carve (not the x carve pro) which is a full kit that you assemble yourself. The cost is really reasonable for the machine you end up with in my opinion. Of course I would love a larger format, CNC but the costs are really high.

It's been quite a few years, probably 5 or so since adding the CNC to my shop and I truly can't imagine not having it. Carving and engraving is fun of course and the detail you can get is amazing, but truly the use case that I turn to it the most for is part jigs and fixtures and templates. Being able to create custom fixturing for one off pieces is so handy and making complex templates is so easy.

You won't regret adding it to your workflow. The steep learning curve is by far the software side. Getting familiar enough with the software to get the results you want is really the only hurdle. After that it's smooth sailing and it makes me smile each time I send a "cut job" to it and it just goes about it's business and knocks out flawless parts.


----------



## JAAune

I've built one machine, retro-fitted a couple others and assembled a 3D printer kit but none from the Open Builds site.

Look for a machine with a rigid frame (stronger is better) and one that operates with a recognized controller like Mach3 or Kmotion that has an online user base. If you know how to program in C, Kmotion is nice since it's highly customizable via scripting. Mach3 has a more robust gui interface for those who can't program.

I've only used two CAM packages: BobCad and VCarve Pro. Bobcad has more options but it takes much longer to setup a cut. I'd only recommend that for production work where each cutting file gets used repeatedly. VCarve Pro is streamlined and fast to use.


----------



## halfmoon

Thanks so much for the feedback. I looked at Millright as well, then joined Reddit to get more opinions and theres a thread there that made me think twice. Go to Reddit and sign up for the CNC subreddit. One person posting there said a lot of the parts you get from Openbuilds can be found elsewhere for less but I'm a bit green for that. Bulkman3D is similar to Openbuilds so I'm checking them out as well.
I'll post more as I sort things out, thanks agian


----------

