Thread: eBay cnc machines

A summary of posts I've read about them:

Be prepared for it not to work out of the box. It may be assembled/set up wrong.
The control electronics may be junk and may need to be replaced (this is easier than troubleshooting them!)
The manual may be in bad Chinglish, or even Mandarin.
Software provided may be a cracked version.
Expect support from the seller on any of these issues to be non-existent.

As long as you accept that you might have to spring out an extra few hundred that you weren't expecting to spend, and allocate a fair amount of time to going through and essentially reassembling things, they are not too bad an introduction to the world of CNC. There are no really insurmountable problems, it just may not be such a bargain as first expected.

My main point would be will it do what you want? Take some time to think about the sort of things you want to make, and if the material will fit inside the machine's working envelope, room for clamping etc.

My 6040 works well, but I had to do a fair bit of troubleshooting to get it working right. Assembly was very straightforward and didn't present any problems. It took about 2 hours from memory.

I replaced the electronics straight out of the bag, using a tinyg controller. Its a little small amperage wise for the steppers, but so far I havn't had any problems. I believe there are a number of usb controllers on the market now that are designed to work nicely with mach3, which is a lot of people's tool of choice. I don't believe the tinyg does this, but this hasn't been a problem so far.

The thing that cost me the most in terms of troubleshooting time and wrecked jobs was not replacing all the cables with decent shielded ones. The chinese VFDs are electrically noisy, which can cause problems for the controller (in my case I was getting stray signals appearing on the Z axis cables, all 6 end stop switch cables, my usb cable and my mains power leads). Definately get some of the VFD cable Homann Design's for the line from your spindle to the VFD.

I still think it was a good investment, especially when you compare them to what else is on the market for the price. I belive you can get them bare now, so without the electronics or wiring harness, for a couple of hundred less.

Shellyshed
i have a little 6040, for me it works fine, but be prepared to do some mods
yes the manual is crap and the Mach program, am sure is a pirate version, but there is an english version of the manual on the forum here
yes you will have to assemble it on arrival but with a bit of patience making sure that everything is square etc its not that hard to do (its actually a pretty solid frame)
the wiring from the controller to the machine is crap and will eventually fail, thats when bad things will happen. so your best to replace that straight away, again be carefull with the soldering of connections on the motors, i wasnt and fried a card in the controller, so i had to rebuild the controller as well (more cost). for me i think i bought the machine for $1600 aust and that was delivered to my door here in mount isa, another $1200 to build a new controller run new cables to machine, plus a new pump system for the water cooled spindle (i proberly replaced more than i needed to) heaps of coffee and panadol and i have a machine that works fine the only short fall now is the operators skill set, its all a learning curve
but if your carefull with the assembly and replacing the cabling like i mentioned above it wont cost that much
another piece of advice study who you buy it from look at their history and dont be afraid to ask heaps of questions about delivery costs etc
there are some real guru's here on the forum that can help with any tech / set up issues, i am pretty sure i still have all the note i took down for the wiring/set up etc, All written in the dummys version

anyway thats my take on the machine
Cheers Tony

I bought the carving-cnc model (x6-1500get), worked straight out of the box. Have not used it a whole lot mainly because I dont have the space and still waiting on the new shed to get build. However, what little use its had its not missed a beat yet.