Hello Adam… thanks for the notification. I have only just completed everything I needed to. The machine is reputed to take about two hours to build. I think that may be true but I took a bit longer. I was building the machine into a space designed for it because I have so little room. I built a bench to take about 200kg and then built my SO3 standard (16 x 16 x 3 inches work area) on the bench.
I first placed a rubber mat 700 x 900mm on the bench (slightly larger size than the SO3’s footprint by 100mm all around) and the mat was 12mm thick and weighed around 20kgs. The purpose was to reduce resonant frequencies and vibration. Each extrusion of the Shapeoko is constructed from aluminium with 5mm thick walls.
I took about 8 hours to assemble the baseboard, the framework, the X,Y and Z rails and the axis carriages. I left every single fastener loose by about half a turn. The next day was spent applying and tensioning the belts and V wheels and running all of the electrics and fitting the control board.
The final day was spent adding the router, squaring the machine from the base upwards and tightening screws in a crossed furthest apart sequence for every set of screws. I made every screw finger tight, in sequence, then used an allen key in the same sequence and then I added 1/8th of a turn to every screw. Some screws had medium loctite (blue) added at the assembly and tightening stage.
Every parameter for square, flatness and tramming was checked and double checked before all of the screws were finally tightened. The I added the sharpie to the router and ran the file that produced the Shapeoko logo. Over the last couple of days I have added the JTech 4,2W laser and tested that. I am now a happy bunny and the whole assembly took less than one week.
Is it as convenient to assemble as a Snapmaker? Absolutely not. The difference is the multiple boxes of multiple bits and pieces as opposed to my assembly of a Snapmaker 1 in 20 minutes. I now have a decent work area rather than the 3.5 inches square of SM1. The 16 x 16 x 3 is a major improvement and the reason I changed to a full sized machine.
I am still adding bits to the library of Carbide Create Pro and Carbide Motion is a dream to use. I m using Lightburn for the laser and there is no finer software in my opinion.
This post would be nothing without pix so as usual… some pix.
First is a 6 x 3.5 inch owl made with the JTech 4.2W laser. Power was 100% at a distance of 3.175mm from the workpiece. Speed was 2540 mm per minute. (I have some video footage being processed right now, showing the beast in action. The quality is impressive with no scorching evident. The lines are finely focussed and the magnetic mounting is ultra secure. The fan on top of the laser housing helps with keeping everything cool.
This shot is taken from the rear of the X axis to show the control box and the wiring running into it.
The brush is attached by magnets to the ‘Sweepy’ vacuum adapter and the vacuum hose is shown attached to that.
The tram plate is attached to the Z axis and is interesting. The top left hole is normal sizes and the other three holes are oversized. This makes tramming very easy because the whole mount may be rotated by a millimetre either way. This is one huge and solid carriage with some of the construction in 1/4 plate steel.
A side view of the X axis rail confirms the construction material thickness of the Z axis carriage.
Another view of the Z axis showing the router mount.
I mentioned the extrusions rails having 5mm thick walls… here is the evidence.
Control box and wiring from stepper motors
The initial start up logo written in sharpie ink on the baseboard after construction was completed.
Close image of Sharpie logo.
All in all the machine is very high quality, beautifully made and if I can assemble one, anyone can do it. The laser just added a whole new dimension to the machine. It is really efficient and super effective. Would I recommend a Shapeoko to a person with limited funds? (I could not afford for them to waste money on my recommendation) Yes, I would say absolutely yes! They have just announced a Shapeoko Pro model with Ballscrews rather than belts. The belts appear to work to an accuracy of 0.001 with careful set up. I would suggest that the ballscrews would do that in an easier manner.
The forum is super active and on my first posting, I ‘met’ 5 members of the Carbide 3D staff. All of my questions were answered immediately and I received a large e-book guide on issues when using the machine. There was a full 31 page assembly guide and it was great to be able to ask questions of people in the forum when I was unsure. I had my hand held every step of the way. I am very pleased with my purchases.
forum is: https://community.carbide3d.com/
Laser working…
. I knew I’d get something out of asking here. I’m a bit new to the whole maker space.
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) i want to sell my SM2 and am already working on building an MPCNC, it can offer the same 3 in one if built correctly (really most CNCs can be any number of things, the most important aspect is rigidity). and it only costs about $500. but i enjoy playing with the machine far more then making stuff on it. so the SM2 is just not the right fit for me. i think a CNC machine is like a car, you have to find the right one for you! 