Genmitsu 3020-PRO Ultra CNC Router Machine, Upgraded 710W Spindle, All-Metal Engraver for Metal, Wood, Acrylic, PCB, MDF, Built-in Motherboard Fan, Work Area 11.8″x8.1″x3.1″

Beast
Sold, heavy, this thing is a beast. I’m now carving aluminum. I also bought the “Kaba Fold CNC Enclosure for CNC Machine” and it makes it very quiet. Recommend them both.

Terrible instructions
The instructions for this CNC are terrible. First, they only provide you one 3mm wrench and that is the only thing they expect you to use, but to take out the rails and install the extension kit, you have to have a number of other wrenches. First unit I got had many issues, second one seems to be better, but QC is not great.

Quality
I have purchased 4 of this brands CNC’s since 2022. This is one of the smaller ones I have bought. I started off with a 3018 and if just wasn’t up to my needs in size and strength. Everything is packaged very well and secure. This one is made with all metal parts, and even though the working space isn’t any larger it is well made. Assembly time is really low with this model, I think it took me around 30 minutes to put together and ensure the spindle was squared with the deck of the bed. Plugged all the wires up and had it running in less then a hour to test it. I will be setting this smaller one up to only engrave my products freeing up my 2 larger CNC’s. For small projects I would recommend this little CNC, out of the box it is ready to mill. You will want to get or make a dust boot for it if you don’t want dust and chips all over your work area and the rails of this CNC.

nicely made but useless without design software, accessories not availble, very limited use
Although this CNC router seems well made from heavy aluminum extrusions and the instructions are OK if you take your time with it. There is no indexing pin or key of any kind to make sure the vertical support is square to the base which is somewhat unexpected considering how well the rest of it is made. There are 8 screws on each side of the vertical support so once you square it up it should stay in place. I probably spent more time than the physical assembly trying to figure out which cable went where on the controller since it is not obvious. Once I had it all hooked up and power on, the manual controls did nothing. It has arrows which I assume are to move the spindle, and it did move once – but only once. The spindle has a separate power cord and is not controlled by the computer at all. Once assembled, I realized there is no real design software or any indication of how to create a g-code file to control it if you do not have CAD software. There is a program called “Candle” on the supplied flash drive, with no mention of how to install it anywhere, but that part was easy enough. There are 3 test files on the flash drive, but no way to design or import your own files. So unless you want a concentric circles, a wheel,, or the word “sainsmart” engraved, you can’t do much with it. The work area of this is only 300mm x 205 mm (11.8″ x 8″) so you can’t do much with it anyway, it it worked! The kit includes a 1/8″ collet and a few “V” bits but nothing more. The manual says you can use 1/4″ bits, but that collet is not included and there is no mention of it in the accessory guide – though there are 1/4″ bits in that guide. So while they may have put some effort into designing an expensive hobby CNC router, there are just too many short comings to make this usable for routing a design on cabinet doors and drawer fronts like I had intended.

Bonne petite machine

I am your casual DYI’er and woodworker. I pick up some small to mid size projects quite frequently and got a modest collection of tools to work with. I always did routing with a Dremel set but was never really good at it. With that said, this is my first CNC machine and have to say I am very impressed with it. It is going to save me a lot of hassle in the future (for the small amount of hassle I have to pay upfront through the setting up process).It took a little while to get used to it and I had to figure out a lot of it on my own. The programming instructions are pretty terrible and you better know your way around a computer because this is kind of technical. You need to find and install the proper driver and configure settings to get it to communicate properly with your machine. I think of myself as a pretty decent computer guy but even this had me scratching my head a few times. It comes with an SD card with all the software you need but the driver itself was actually outdated and I needed to go to their official website and navigate myself to the latest one, as I am running on a Windows 11 (The driver on their SD card didn’t mention that OS). On top of navigating their page, it is in what I expect to be Mandarin. You need to use your browser’s translator, which luckily, those things are pretty good now.After getting the driver figured out, the two separate programs to run the thing needed to be set up. The first one is a program called “Candle” which I think is their flagship program. It seems to be very user friendly and easy to navigate but the configurations in the manual don’t work properly. When I tried to run it, it would not make contact with the wood. It also had issues finding your coordinates you calibrated the origin to. It would not move at all when I clicked the “move to origin” button. It would have no issue finding its “home” location however, but I think that just uses the axis limiters. I think I am going to have to play with this program a little more, adjust settings how I understand them and hope for the best. Maybe a few more YouTube videos will help (which by the way, I highly recommend you checking out before purchasing).The second program seems to be a universal program that can be adapted to any CNC machine called “Universal Gcode Platform”. I had more success with this and is what I use in my video to demonstrate one of their sample templates. The only thing I wish I could do with these programs is to change the scale of the projects. I really wanted to see their sample done on a much larger scale because as you can see in my pics, with the bits they provided, it does not translate well onto the wood. The words are a lot more bubbled as compared to the design on the computer. I think I am going to have to brush up on my AutoCAD skills again… (Please keep in mind that the wood I used was not planed flat which is why the edge is shallower then the rest on the project).The operation of the machine is very smooth and a lot faster than what I was expecting. It created very little dust and did not fling much particulate very far. You’d probably only need a hood/ventilated box for it if you decide to use a laser attachment. For more detailed projects, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to install a pressurized air line to remove particulate from the project area actually, rather than a suction apparatus.I am a little disappointed that this model doesn’t incorporate an automatic speed control for the rotation. You have to manually adjust that and some projects will call for different speeds at different intervals. So, that kind of takes away some of its convenience. You either stick with the same speed or keep a close eye on the project and pause it wherever there is a need for speed adjustment.In the end, it finished my sample rather quickly and the edges were very sharp and smooth. It is amazingly precise, right down to the .01mm. I will have to try different attachments with this in the future and have some fun with it. Also, speaking on the controller, it is pretty robust and basic. Simple in its controls but could be a bit more user friendly. It can be frustrating trying to fumble your way through the settings at times too, but that’s just another minor inconvenience.Anyways, I suppose I forgot to mention the assembly. It was actually really easy to assemble. That’s all there is to that. The manual was straight forward and everything buttoned up perfectly. There is an attachment to hook up a laser which I think I might try in the future, and it came with two different sets of clamps to hold the workpiece down. Almost everything is labeled with tags on the backside and/or already plugged in for you. I only needed to plug in 4 wires and it was self-explanatory where they went. All the other wires were neatly zip tied for me too. I just needed to use two more of their supplied zip ties to complete the organization of the wires.In the end, everything worked out great. All the limiters and the E-stop functioned properly. I do kind of wish that it would reset itself once a limiter is released but that is a minor hassle. I am very happy with this machine and cannot wait to start working on some real projects! If I think of anything more to elaborate on or if any issues evolve after this review, I will be sure to update it.Thank you for reading my review! 🙏