After a long 8 weeks and 5 days my Journeyman was delivered by UPS this past Tuesday. Fortunately, everything arrived in good shape. I have to say, 1F has made assembly of the main unit very easy. They have a well written, easy to follow, assembly manual. After unpacking the three boxes it took only about an hour to put it together. Plug and play cables make wiring it a snap. Here are the three main components:




After hooking up the wiring it looked like this:



I'll clean up the wiring later. For now I just want to use the thing after waiting so long for it to arrive.

My first attempt at flattening the spoilboard was a miserable failure. I had no idea that MDF has tension in it. I only used 4 screws to hold down that 32 x 48" panel. When I milled off the surface to flatten it it wanted to curl up. Plan B. I took it off, cut it into 6" wide strips, and attached each piece with 6 recessed screws, then flattened it again. Now it's good.



I also added grid lines 2" OC and 1/4" dowel holes on most of the grid intersections. I'm ready to put it to work.

My first impressions are that the Journeyman is really robust for a hobby price unit. Those X-axis tubes are 2" diameter, the Y-axis are 35 mm. The palm router is the limiting factor but I think it will work fine until I upgrade to a spindle at some point. I'm also very impressed with the Dust Deputy I bought to use with my shop vac for dust collection. I did not clean up after flattening the spoilboard and cutting the grid and dowel holes before taking this picture.

I'm really excited to see what new directions the CNC will take my woodworking.

John