C-Beam Machine Bundle

Bought the C-Beam Machine Mechanical Bundle with Nema 23 Stepper Motors, CNC xPro V2 Controller Stepper Driver, and 12V/30A Power Supply from the Open Builds Part Store. It took a while to ship or I am just spoiled by Amazon, but it all arrived in one box packed well. Once you get all of the bubble wrap off everything is labeled well to follow along with the video to start assembly. There was an X, Y, Z, and Frame bags of hardware. It took me about 4 evenings working on it and pausing the video to get everything up and running and carving MDF letters.

I wired the axes backwards on the X and the Z and it took hearing an awful grinding/clicking noise from the motors to figure that out. I highly suggest you print out the picture that the video says is available with the X, Y, Z axes mapped on it to make sure you wire your stepper motors up correctly. I must have been tired or over excited to see the thing work so I didn't print out the picture, clicked a couple of arrow buttons and it moved, great, then loaded the Indian head sample into the grbl panel software only to hear what I have now read is the motor stalling. It was painful to think that I may have just broken this machine that I have spent so many hours and dollars on. So I slowed down and figured out that X+ meant moving away from the front of the machine and X- meant moving toward the front of the machine. I reversed the X axis wires and tested the Indian head again only to hear the dreaded noise again. DOH! I had the Z axis wires reversed too. So after that I had to learn how to use Sketch and the SketchUCam plugin for it. I don't have any foam to play with.
This pic shows what works for me...


Anyway, I have the bug. It took a couple years of day-dreaming about having a CNC machine before coming across the C-Beam all bundled in a kit and deciding now was the time to get one. I still have no justification whatsoever for having one other than my router skills are seriously poor. My router is usually collecting dust instead of making it. So now I have to save and practice on this machine so I can make plates for a bigger
machine!
.

Oh and I'm open to good suggestions on what to tell my wife when she asks "What does it do?" and "Why do you need one of those?" next time. All I could do was make her a letter M.



I called this build complete, because it is together and working, but the more I learn the ore I think that it may never be "complete". Dust collector, limit switches, wire carrier, relay for router, emergency stop, bits, bits, bits...

Thanks.