Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

To set the stage, I have always been intrigued by CNC machines but have never touched or assembled one. I AM, however, very familiar with 3D printers and the overall mechanics seemed similar. For the price, the SainSmart CNC3018 Pro seemed worth trying out to gain exposure to the hobby. I have been absolutely blown away with the quality construction and ease of use! Assembly - assembly was easy; just take your time and watch one of the assembly videos available on YouTube. The included manual is straightforward, but watching the video helped me determine little things (like which way the frame pieces needed to be oriented to get the bearings in the correct places, etc.). The manual reminded me of an Ikea furniture assembly guide - lots of pictures! There were metal shavings from cutting the aluminum extrusions and some of the threads on the bolts were dirty, so I used canned area to remove all of the shavings and pre-screwed the bolts into the threads. From opening the box to powering on the machine took me about 1 1/2 hours. Build quality - this thing is sturdy! When I opened the box and saw the layers of parts, I was terrified that it would feel flimsy and be difficult to install. I took my time and it feels like a much more expensive piece of equipment. There are plenty of CNC3018 options out there, but SainSmart seems to have great quality control and really cares about customer experience. I think my only suggestion would be to include a couple extra pieces of assembly hardware (bolts, T-nuts, etc) just in case anything is damaged or missing, but I had everything I needed for a good assembly. Usage - as I mentioned, I have NEVER used a CNC before and within 10 minutes of having the machine assembled I started engraving the test files. You bring down the Z-axis (bit tip) level with your material, select the gcode file (the test files are all .nc extensions), and it gets started. Since there are no limit switches, it considers it's starting point "home", so it is easy to just move to a clean piece of wood to start another model. I haven't figured out making my own gcode files, but that certainly isn't anything to do with the machine, and as you can see in the pictures, it accurately carves the test files. Overall this thing is awesome. I already ordered the offline controller & laser and I hope to experiment with those soon. For now it is time to learn Easel so I can make my own files. Happy to help if anyone has questions about this CNC machine.