Bought July 2024. I was careful to do the set up correctly:1. Upload grbl to arduino was OK2. Connected heat sinks to drives making sure there are no shorts.3. Connected drives to the CNC board making sure EN corner matches the same corner on CNC board.4. Connected the motors. Never power on with drives without motors.5. Add the GND - EN jumper on the CNC board.6. Power on with a PSU of 30V and 10A with correct polarity.7. Install the universal grbl program and send commands.Troubleshooting: My issue not getting it working was the power supply had an explicit output button that I missed xD.Some people say they contacted the seller, there is no information on how to contact.Great kit, worked as advertised after following above steps.

The media could not be loaded.

So let's start with the bad:1. There is a bit of a misleading description. The packaging contents clearly state that there are six limit switches, but only three come with the unit. The seller has stated that it can be interpreted either way, but I dont see it. To overcome this, buy additional switches. They're cheap. Seriously, they're not only cheap, but they're pretty common models.Suggestion: they're cheap, so the seller should clear this up once and for all and just change the product so it comes with six...2. The instructions are lacking. Since this is a beginners kit, we should expect people to not know what theyre doing. Links can be found to the electronic user manuals and worked up instructions, but people need to dig for this information.Suggestion: post the links in the product description so people know where to go.3. Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) is a pain in the rear. Once set up, my carves would stall in the middle, rendering my machine useless. It took a long time to figure out that it was electromagnetic interference "setting off" my limit switches. I tried bonding and grounding everything and wrapped my vacuum in enough copper that i'm afraid someone's gonna steal the thing for street value. In the end, I got the machine working by just turning the limit switches off and limiting the programs by setting the workpiece in the center of the rig...Suggestion: hyperlinks to EMI troubleshooting guides and grounding/bonding guides. Also: change the limit switch wiring to shielded wiring. This will save so much time and frustration... Remember: your key demo is a group of novices trying to learn the craft...4. Limit switch leads are not long enough for even a modest machine. Mine has a carving area of about 12"x18" and the wires were about half as long as they needed to be. I had to splice on extensions for each of the X- and Z- axis switchesSuggestion: Include wire extensions for at least four of the switches5. Only comes with 3 motors. A lot of the cnc machines serviced by this size stepper need two to run the y-axis train.Suggestion: Adding a fourth motor and stepper driver would be suitable here.6. Doesn't support a touchpad. Well, it does if you know how to wire it, but thats not obvious and needed a lot of research to figure out how to do it.Suggestion: provide detail on how to wire a simple touchpadFor all of the suggestions, even a link to a separate product kit would be helpful. These are serious shortcomings of this kit.With the whining out of the way, lets look at the good parts of this kit1. The kit was pretty easy to install. Im a complete novice, but with some help from the internet, i quickly learned how to wire and test the steppers and drivers, install the switches and download and use the software. UGCS and Easel are my go-tos and theres very little arduino or firmware to fiddle around with.2. Its pretty universal. Almost everyone has support for the arduino and CNC shield being used. Finding help, including videos, was pretty easy for me.3. Its working... It may sound simple, but the fact that i was able to fumble my way through the setup process and learn as many things as I did and the machine didnt fry stepper drivers or motors says a lot. I took the rig apart a lot while setting it up and first carves are coming out pretty solid!That's pretty much it for my review. I know there are more downs than ups, but I would rate this kit a pretty solid one and recommend it for folks. It was a journey to get to where I am, but i learned a lot and am already looking at upgrades and mods. I dont think I would be where i am if those negatives didnt exist as learning experiences.

I am a novice with adruino however in fairness I work with plcs and high end motion control so I have a basic understanding of what would be needed to get a motor to function.When you get the kit it has the uno board, the stepper drivers from Texas instruments with heat sinks, as well as the cnc shield controller and zero instructions....So my guess is this kit is aimed at the hobbyist or kids with little experience and if that's the case you need to watch several videos as boring as that sounds to get enough info to make this successful for yourself at many wemt too fast over the software or issues with tuning the drivers.Anyway I'm definitely going to buy more to build a few different things for work that I've wanted to do but couldn't justify thousands of dollars to pull it off so for under 100 bucks it's a no Brainerd.I'm not going to give a detailed explanation of how to program this etc but after a little agrivation I will try to spare you the same.1. Make sure you get the power supply polarity correct. You swap wires the things junk instantly I've read didn't want to test the theory..2. Download adriuno and then go to github and download the grbl files. Extract them and then upload them into the uno. Watch several videos until you can see all the steps before just doing it as many videos are missing steps.3. After you've flashed the uno assemble the cnc shield and add the driver boards. NEVER ADD A DRIVER BOARD AND NOT HAVE A MOTOR. NO MOTOR NO DRIVER BOARD. And match the En pin on driver to socket on shield board if you screw up backwards it's junk.4. Turn down the potentiometer all the way down plenty of videos on how to adjust. They cone way to high and people claim they will fry.5. DOWNLOAD cncjs gcode sender to your computerOpen it and it will find your uno. Then press say x or y or z arrows and stuff should move.6. Learn g code or get a cad cam program and you're in business

Very nice packet