Hello, I am Robert, live in Oakville, Ontario, Canada.
My son is starting in woodworking business and about a year ago he mentioned that large-size thickness planers are becoming a thing of a past and are being replaced by CNC routers for flattening large live edge table slabs.
I looked into it and thought I can build one much cheaper than buying a commercial unit. I had no prior experience in machining and mechanical design so there was (and still is) a lot for me to learn. But working on weekends I did it in about 8 months. A few days ago we leveled the first table :-D
There are a few little things still "under construction" but the machine is functional. I borrowed the rail design from Joe's CNC blueprint to keep the cost down but used commercial linear bearings for the Z axis. The gantry rails are 144" long (the longest 80/20 profiles local supplier could deliver), the gantry is 80" wide, Z axis travel is about 5".
I started with an idea of using Arduino+GRBL controller but quickly abandoned it in favour of Mach3+parallel port break out board. I am very grateful to NFS/Artsoft for making it possible and so affordable.
Using Mach3 instead of open-source significantly accelerated my build. As I learn more about Mach software appreciate more and more what it can do.