Zep Labs Upgrades a Cheap Chinese 3040T CNC to Grbl with an Arduino Controller
Having run into trouble with the stock controller, a 3040T CNC receives a budget-friendly upgrade courtesy of an Arduino Uno and Grbl.
YouTuber Zep Labs has shared a pair of videos demonstrating an upgrade to a four-axis 3040T CNC mill, imported at a low cost from China, to run Grbl on an Arduino board.
Having been asked for assistance with the unbranded 3040T from a friend whose grandfather had bought it as a learning project but had since passed away, Zep Labs found that the stock controller was far from perfect. Replacing the controller, however, would prove expensive — unless it was replaced with an Arduino running the open source Grbl firmware.
Zep Labs' work on the machine sees the stock controller replaced with an Arduino Uno with dedicated CNC shield, requiring only TB6600 4A stepper motor drivers to interface with the motors already installed in the CNC.
"Just like that, this machine is alive again," Zep Labs notes following the completion of the build. "This time running on Grbl, which is open source — meaning that it has lots of people using it, supporting it, improving it, and it has tonnes and tonnes of compatible software that you could use it with."
Both videos detailing the upgrade have been published to the Zep Labs YouTube channel.