There seems to be a chicken or egg problem in building a high-quality mechanical workshop, at least for those who are unwilling to mortgage their houses for the money needed to buy all these new tools. In other words, well-built tools often require good tools. To help solve this problem, [Ryan] Designed and built this CNC machine tool In addition to common tools, hardware store supplies and some ready-made parts from the Internet, everything can be built.
Because it is built with consumer-grade materials, [Ryan] With the design concept of “purchase precision”, this means that most of the parts required for the construction are sufficient for its purpose, without the need for processing in any way before being incorporated into the factory. For example, he uses a granite slab because it is hard, flat, heavy and strong at the time of purchase and can be placed in the machine immediately. Similarly, his linear guide does not need to be modified before it is put into use, and it has high accuracy and minimum calibration. From there, he applies the KISS principle and uses the simplest parts available. Through this design process, he was able to “guide” a high-quality rolling mill at a price of approximately $1,500, without the need for more tools than you might already have.
As we all know, RIG-CNC is also fully open source, which further consolidates its guideability. There are more detailed information on the project page and the video linked below. The uniqueness of this project is not only the construction of rolling mills with common parts and tools, but also because this design concept is very powerful. Good design goes further in our construction than many of us may realize, and good design usually produces something that is easier to maintain and easier to crack than the original creator might have thought.