I stopped by the CA room tonight and saw the Shapeoko. All the wires except the e-Stop looked hooked up and the enclosure looks great. What’s the word on it working? can’t wait until there is a class for it.
Cheers!
4 Likes
The team has been busy!! I am excited about it as well.
It’s a rebirth.
I love this place.
Chucky-B (new nickname) said he would teach classes if I saved the beast. Anyone else skilled with this tool? @Val_Curry @valxcurry also knows but he’s busy in his role taking over several college courses.
Most importantly - we need a nickname for it.
Regarding the Shapeoko, it deserves it’s own post.
The short is, all the skills and graphics we develop for the vinyl cutter, lasers, CNC router in the woodshop, plasma cutter… All that works.
We can do so much with it. Fun times ahead.
1 Like
Some Shapeoko Tutorials: https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/tags/shapeoko.
I just like saying it: Shapeoko, Shapeoko, Shapeoko…
1 Like
You’ll see me some night this week wrapping up the 110v electrical and some control wiring work and, if time permits, attempting a test job 
There’s a few kinks to work out yet though and we need to pull together a class curriculum. Stay tuned.
3 Likes
I’m looking forward to it. thanks!
Still need to brainstorm a dust extraction concept for it, but its coming along nice.
Glad you like the enclosure
2 Likes
the newer desktop CNCs like the Carvey and Nomad don’t use any dust extraction. They rely on you using a shopvac after the face. That could work or a simple hole/port in the side to attach a vac would work.
Cheers!
Because of it’s small size, low volume of cuttings, the original thought was a couple of small fans (I got a couple 115V 4"~5" size from Fred’s Treasure Palace, that would easily work with on off power switch) that would continuously blow cuttings off work area to other side that had a slot that dropped into a drawer that could be emptied. Advantage: quiet, self-contained, easily to emptied. Because they are 115V would be fairly powerful for size and no transformer needed. No need to vent as it is just blowing across, heavy material drops in slot and air returns to opposite side.
1 Like
We do have a slot available, leading to the drawer underneath. I could knock together a dust box for that.
David, did you put the fans in the black box? There were a few in there.
Yep, those are the ones - new in the box! That’s what they are for - so free to use. Any you don’t end up using I’d like back for other possible projects.
2 Likes
I added a junction box with a master power switch last night so if we do add some 110v fans that’s going to be straight forward. However, I want to advocate that we run a few test jobs and see how the enclosure impacts the typical debris situation before we contemplate any more mods focused on that. More important than dust we need to jog the enclosure itself forward a bit as the spindle impacts it at Y0.
Otherwise, we just need to cut a new waste board (there’s some 1/4 MDF scrap by thge machine or I have a bigger sheet at home) and that’s about it folks. It’s back to the state it was in before CA adopted it with improvements. Just need a training deck and then we’ll do a trial class I volunteer to do the deck and an into class unless someone else is dying to do so.
3 Likes
I volunteer to be in a trial class. 
(so long as it is Thurs - Sun when I’m not in class).
I don’t think we’re going to need dust collection any time soon and I was wrong about the spindle hitting the case. All in all the new case helps with the noise level quite a bit and does a stellar job of keeping things tidy and safe (if a tool head breaks).
Edit: Sorry, I don’t know how to upload pics and videos (maybe someone can point me to instructions) but the basic message here is the machine lives again
2 Likes
During message creation, just drag-n-drop onto the message window, or use the “upload” button in the editor, highligted here with the blue squareish thingy (sorry, did it freehand).
Awesome work on the Shapeoko!
Glad it works! Can’t wait to play with it 
Now we need a class on it
I was just reading up on how to request and schedule a class. Looks like if I request an honorarium and find a good time for 3+ students the CA committee will receive $100 (I’m donating honorarium). That would be nice as it would cover some new tooling and who knows what. Also appears to take 12 days lead time, more or less.
What time works for people and CA? Weekend or weekday evening or maybe weekend afternoon? Say around the 30th?
If someone is just dying to run a job or talk about running a job you can PM me and we’ll figure something out.
2 Likes
Pick a time - they will come!
1 Like