I’ve taken the plunged and bought myself a Shapeoko CNC router. It’s an open source hardware platform and comes as a kit. A bunch of other builders are going down the same path and it’s going to be fun to share some ideas.

In it’s basic form it’s a small hobby desktop router, but most people hack it to do a lot more. I ordered the mechanical kit from Instructables and sourced the electronics from various places as I wanted to go a slightly different route than the default option.

Most the parts arrived this week so I’m in the middle of assembling it. The machine uses MakerSlide and is easily expanded to have a much larger work area. Here’s a quick shot of where I am right now, but tomorrow I’ll be replacing the X/Y Axis with longer lengths so I can mill out larger Artoo parts like the skins.

Plan is to start work on a styrene droid once I’ve got the machine up and running and calibrated.