FabNC
A scratch-built CNC mill engineered for real metal-cutting power and precision.
Project Overview
Why?
As graduation approached, I felt a growing urgency: I was losing access to MIT’s makerspaces — the place where I learned how to make (almost) anything. Going back home to Palestine meant entering an environment where this kind of infrastructure simply doesn’t exist. It was a bit suffocating. Imagine: Just as you start to believe that you can make anything, the ifrastructure that would've enabled you to do so suddenly vanishes. I didn't want that limitation to dictate what I could build. At the same time, I was finishing my incomplete in How to Make (Almost) Anything, fully immersed in Neil Gershenfeld’s vision of Fab 2.0 and Fab 3.0—a future where digital fabrication becomes globally accessible, and where machines don’t just make products, but eventually make other machines. The idea that manufacturing could be decentralized, shared, and self- propagating felt like its own kind of utopia. It felt like a utopia that could be part of the answer to how will we rebuild Gaza's infrastructure from complete collapse. From these dreams, a concrete challenge was born: my graduation gift to myself would be to build my own CNC mill from scratch-An opportunity to actually see the current reality of this vision, and to make a machine that could bootstrap future projects, future tools, and eventually a small-scale fabrication lab that others could benefit from too. Moreover, it was a test of my performance in the face of a complex project that is largely outside of my domain of expertise.
Constraints and scope:
I wanted a CNC mill that would be good enough for most of my needs. It might not be specialized for any specific application, but it should be able to handle most of the tasks i would need a CNC mill for adequately. In particular, I wanted a machine that would be capable of machining the parts I would need to build a larger CNC mill(that whole fab 2.0 idea of a self sustainable fab lab). The specific context where I am buildling this CNC in MIT and then taking it with on a flight to Palestine imposed its own constraints and hueristics. For one, for the sake of cost effectiveness, the plan is to take the machine in a checked bag. This means that for the size of the machine to be maximal, it should be made of assembled parts that can be disassembled and reassembled. Moreover, the size of the parts is constrained by the size of the checked bag. This constraint practically define the size of the machine since I am looking to maximize the machine's cutting volume. Another hueristic that is introduced is that the machine should relatively light-weight(flight). This is challenging since milling machines often rely on mass to be able to handle resonant frequencie. The structures used to enforce the machine's rigidity are also heavy. The primary objective function to optimize is the cost of the machine. Not necessarily the absolute material cost, but rather the cost that I could personally get the parts for. In other words, salvaged parts and parts that use salvaged scraps as stock are favored as long as it is feasible to meet the constraints if these parts are used. other than the ones previously mentioned, the constraints were that the machine should be precise and stiff enough to to be capable of successfully machining later iterations of the parts used in the machine.