Mostics,CNC 3018 Pro With Spindle,All Metal Frame Wood Router Machine,CNC Engraving Machine,Milling Machine,CNC3018PRO Engraver (Standard)

This is great for a piece of home hobby equipment to play with. A friend helped me set it up which made it easier than doing it your own. The build instructions are pretty good and just do the wiring the best you can.In turns of use it is pretty easy to use the software that comes with it and various settings so you can speed up the burning process. Easily swap the heads between engraving and burning. It is Sturdy when all bolted together.

First of all, I've made some diy CNCs over time, so I know my way around settings things up. I've currently got TTS-25 laser cutter at home, and I've got this for mainly for engraving wood with spindle, not for the laser.The kit is well packed. Most parts are assembled; it was easy to put it together. However instructions could be more detailed. I didn't have problem but a beginner might.And as for the software, I've used fusion 360 for design and UGS for spindle. For the price, I didn't expect a good software as it costs more than the kit.I tested with laser too. It works well with lightburn, but since I have a laser cutter already with the same power, I'll keep this machine for milling only.Overall, for the price, it's a great kit. I'd upgrade spindle over time. With the stock spindle, I wouldn't recommend milling thick materials as it'll take too long with this motor. It's good as a hobby machine where you can learn how cncs function and maintained.

I bought this machine 9 months ago to automate and make more accurate my building of vintage style turret boards for classic 1960's guitar amplifiers and it has worked really well.The unit comes partly assembled and putting together the subassemblies doesn't take long. I was impressed by the heavy solid materials used and the nice quality bearings, slide bars and surface finishes and I had no problems with assembly and initial setup. No missing or damaged parts.My machine was provided with a simple but adequate assembly manual and a small CD with the Candle software which gives manual control of the X Y and Z (up and down) axes, drill/motor on/off and speed controls, as well as allowing you to load precompiled or prewritten GBRL files to run a job with a very simple visualisation screen showing the tool path for the job loaded.I have found that although there is quite a learning curve working out how to create designs (in my case fairly 2D drilling patterns for each amplifier turret board layout), there are many, many helpful and informative videos on YouTube using free software such as FreeCad (also having their own quite complex learning process) which mean you can soon get started.I had to buy various carbide drills and end mills for my specific board drilling and cutting processes and a set of collets to ensure I could fix them securely to the machine, but they are quite easy to find and if sourced from the far east not expensive and have lasted well in use.I have found the Mostics CNC 3018 Pro great to use and although I wouldn't say it actually saves me much time over my previous method on manually drilling the holes with a pillar drill, the rows of precisely and accurately drilled holes in my CNC made boards make for a real step up in quality.You will need to make or buy "spoiler boards" so that drilling or cutting through your work material completely doesn't result in you drilling holes or carving slots into the machines Aluminium bed surface. I just cut some MDF into 30cm x 18cm rectangles and bolted them to the slotted bed with the supplied bolts. Work blanks / material can then be clamped or screwed onto the spoiler board before you run a job.Also, note that although the workspace you can drill or mill on is a reasonable 30cm by 18cm, once you fit the supplied limit switches (a nice idea as they do stop an error in your design or your zero settings causing the machine to attempt to rip itself apart moving outside of its end stops in any direction) you will find the available workspace is reduced by the thickness of the switches. I found this to be too inconvenient as some of my boards are almost 300mm long so I removed the X limit switches and just have to be even more careful when I first run a job and hover over the "Abort" button on Candle. I would also always recommend a dummy run with the Z axis zero set high enough that nothing gets cut or drilled but you can see that the drill head moves to all the right places with no mistakes.Incidentally, not once has the machine done anything other that what the program asked, moving very accurately and precisely between the programmed points of a job, but I do notice that now and then the first motor on commend fails to work so I either look out for this or manually switch the motor on before running the job.I would also VERY strongly advise that you switch off the power switch on the controller module before you reach in with your hands and change a mill or drill bit, as the thought that some strange crash on your connected PC or on the module switching the motor on whilst you were holding a very sharp bit is horrible and could cause carnage! Mine has never switched on on its own, but it's a risk simply not worth taking.As long as you don't manually move any of the axes with the supplied manual rotary knobs or send any move commands via Candle whilst changing the tool with the power switched off, you won't lose your zero origin point setting when you switch back on afterwards.All in all, I fully recommend this CNC machine, but sadly I do have to end on one small slightly negative comment which has resulted in my not quite being able to give it 5 stars and that is that the miniature cooling fan inside the little electronic control module has started to squeal and judder on switch on after relatively little use. I could I suppose have had this module replaced under warranty, but I have instead bought a better quality replacement fan with a hydro bearing which I hope will last a lot longer.I haven't even touched on use of the supplied laser head or the little extension control box (which may be used instead of, but not at the same time as, computer control and allows a job to to run from a memory card with no PC needed), but there is already a lot to take on here! This is a complex and versatile little unit which is limited only by your imagination and by the fairly basic motor supplied, which limits you to working on pretty much non metallic materials only.

The media could not be loaded. As in title instructions are very poor and for someone who never done this before impossible to build machine. As on video you can see it's ending on motherboard diagram. No inormations on how to identify motors which would be x,y and z (how can I know this). No inormations on how to install spindle and laser module properly. I have left with bunch of cables and parts which are not included in assembly instructions and so far machine is useless for me. Provide full assembly instructions.

Good equipment, well built will everything you need to get going, not easy to get to grips with all the different software and settings to produce a piece of work.

I love this its great fun

The machine looks and feels quite sturdy once you spend the time on the Internet finding out how to assemble it correctly and figuring out the missing bits they couldn't be bothered with in the instructions. It could be value for money too as its cheap enough, so I'll persevere with it. At first glance the manual looks good with good photos. Then you have to follow it. If like me, you have never done any laser engraving or routing, don't expect this product to get you started. All the parts are here except the information. The Getting started section for using candle is basically 7 pages of how the machine uses code. Just walk me through engraving a first project and explain the steps. At least I will have engraved one of the examples. Even the online manuals are just digital versions of what's in the box. Very disappointed, I would have loved to have a little project to get me started on the day I assembled it. Instead I'm 2 days in and still figuring stuff out. I've not even attempted the router yet. I've already lost interest because of this.Do your research first, this sellers sales pitch worked and its supposed to be easy and I'm sure it would be if they made more of an effort, and it could be even cheaper if the money wasn't waisted on a useless manual.So much information missing and still no reply from Mostics about any of the issues. 😡Let's hope I have the patience to learn this and I may revisit this review.