I’ve been using my 3D printer for work lately, but there are a few things that I wish it could do better. I am stuck with the limited range of plastics, and the resolution of the prints are only so good. That’s where a low cost CNC mill (Shapeoko) comes in.

Shapeoko is a low-cost open hardware CNC router. With a little work and a few upgrades, the machine is a decent CNC router for small projects. I found Shapeoko while looking at other higher cost CNC machines. I the mechanics only kit through Inventables.com. I also bought the dual Y axis upgrade at the same time, since I wanted to do some actual work with the machine.

Here’s my Shapeoko drawing an image of itself in my notebook.

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