MyDIYCNC Sprite Desktop CNC Machine, Complete Kit

I've been wanting a CNC for some time now but was not willing to spend thousands of dollars to see if it is something worthwhile for me. I received this in mail, and after two hours, had it together. It is important to note that the manual for assembly is not included, you must download from the sellers site. Although the manual includes some very descriptive photos to help with the assembly, I noticed the photographs were not consistent and at certain points contradicted the written instructions. This is a big issue with me since they are the sellers, and at this price, their manual should be without errors. I am good with my hands and took it slow to figure out how to do it right the first time but some of those photographs show the assembly incorrectly. A person with less experience in assembling, would be following the instructions to the letter, and I'm sure would experience issues in putting this thing together.The seller claims that because it is in kit form, if it is damaged due to incorrect assembly, they cannot be held responsible, but I say that if their manual has errors, they should be held responsible. If the seller would contact me, I would be more than glad to point out where they are wrong but If they took the time to look at the photographs in the manual, they would see the errors immediately.One of the biggest peeves in assembling this machine is referral to other manuals to continue assembly. For example, once I finished putting the machine together, the manual referred me to the seller's website to find the wiring manual. It took me a bit to find a reference to it on their website, only to learn that I cannot look at it until I contact them for access. This was on a weekend! The juices were flowing so I had to stop and no one was answering the phone. This is not only unacceptable but it is very unreasonable especially when I've just paid over 600 dollars for their product.Near the end of the assembly manual, there are instructions on how to begin wiring the parallel ribbon to the male 25 pin connector. Right before the assembly manual refers you to their separate wiring instructions they tell you that where the first wire from the parallel ribbon goes. At that point you must go find the wiring reference which is only two pages!!!! What would it take for them to include that in the assembly manual? Anyway, luckily they started me off in the assembly manual because the first wire (Pin one) is described as having a red stripe which it does, but if you look on their wiring manual, pin one is black. And if you compare the drawing of the 25 pin connector it appears to be backwards. If you aren't careful, you may install the wires backwards.On the positive side, the parts seem heavy duty and went together cleanly.UPDATE ************** Friday, March 14, 2014I called MYDIYCNC.COM and I have to say they are the nicest people. My access to the manuals was granted immediately. I did not have a chance to speak with them long, but my needs were taken care of expeditiously. After reviewing access to all of the other manuals and reference material, I see now they are a work in progress. The manual describes some of the tedious steps in putting this kit together that were eliminated in this kit. I will put the wiring together tonight, and hopefully test the sprite over the weekend.UPDATE ************** Sunday, March 16, 2014I finished wiring the Sprite, but their is no way to test it without installing software. I plugged in the power supply and it turned on as expected. After a short period of time I noticed the motors became warm as described somewhere in the manual. Although I had been practicing using a popular CNC program, I could not get it to communicate with the Sprite. I finally downloaded software described in their manual, and followed the settings to the letter and to my great elation, the Sprite responded to the commands from the software.After jogging the x,y, and z axis a bit, a concern developed with the x and y axis. The issue developed in the coupling used to connect the stepper motors with screw rods. The couplings are simply red plastic tubes that are forced on the screw rod and the stepper motor shaft. Because this transfer of rotational energy is entirely dependent on the friction in the tubing, the couplings slip on the smooth stepper motor shaft. To make matters worse, there is enough friction on the travel in the guide rails which caused the couplings to begin slipping. I looked up some aluminum couplings online and saw they were for sale under 10 dollars each. This is something I would have gladly paid extra for to eliminate this issue. The aluminum couplings are secured with an allen bolt that clamps on to the shafts, and still do the same job of protecting the equipment. At the price I paid for the Sprite I would expect aluminum couplers that don't slip as easily. I will order three of those couplers from somewhere else. The stepper motors are outstanding, there is plenty of torque, and I'm sure more than enough quality to do the job. I tried pinching the shaft as it rotated to see how much energy would get them to stop, and was not able to do it.Unfortunately the spindle is a different story. The one included with this kit is not worth too much time. At full throttle, I can pinch it to a stop with my fingers almost immediately. Although this kit is not designed to do heavy duty work, they do advertise that you can make signs with it and I would think that a small wood sign is going to take a bit more torque from the spindle than it has now. I will be replacing it with an old dremel as soon as I build a clamp for it.All in all it is an OK purchase if you have the money burning a hole in your pocket. I had four stars but downgraded it to three to save someone else the frustration. If I had known all this before purchasing, I would probably have save a little more to buy a higher quality model.I am learning, and so I guess I'll consider the money spent on this device a good education in my quest to build a much larger home-built one myself.

I really thought that the free manual they provide would suffice although intuitive it doesnt provide any wiring diagrams or atleast i havent found them. Im very dissapointed I contacted them for support and its been nearly 2 days and i still havent recieved any response on this... this review is only on the assembly side when I get it working ill update on the system itself

The package arrived incredibly quickly and the Sprite was easy to assemble. Just want to update my previous 5-star comments on seller feedback to reflect that there *is* a mistake in the instructions causing Z to be wired backwards, but a quick swap of the wires corrected that. All in all still a good experience so far. Decent little machine!

Worst product ever! All it's good for is shaping butter! Forget trying to shape soft woods like pine. The only way to engrave plastics is to drop the feed rates to less than 1 inch a minute. That's pathetic!!! Save your money for something better.

Easy build. Great customer support. The spindle is a little weak but I replaced it with my rotozip and it works great!

The kit is not terribly difficult to build on the structural side. The wiring, however, is a different story. The directions from their website make it very easy to mistakenly wire the entire device backwards, as I did. Once you get the machine up and running, and can move the drill in the x,y, and z directions you may quickly find that there is far too much friction on the guide rails, as is pointed out in a different review, and it causes the motors to slip inside the plastic coupling or stall out completely (which can burn out the motor if you aren't careful). After reducing the guide rail diameters just a hair the X-axis now wiggles, causing the machine to be rather inaccurate, however I must admit that this problem was partly my fault. Lastly, if you do not already have a program that can write G-code from your designs you will either need to buy one, make one yourself, or write your own G-code which will be even less fun than it sounds.The people running this business are very nice, and certainly show great promise in their ability to be innovative. However, this machine is going to take a lot of modification in order to be the all powerful fabrication machine you want it to be. It has me wishing I had saved up my money and bought a more professional home CNC machine, or built one all on my own. A positive side to this is that for me, it was a great educational experience building and debugging this machine. It has me wanting to build my own large, heavy duty, precise CNC machine. I am struggling to say that this machine is worth the money.If you are going to buy this kit, be prepared to do a lot more work on it and combat some frustration along the way. Also, invest in better motor/screw couplings and buy more powerful stepper motors. If you do not, your machine may not work at all.