SO3 XL upgrade assembly tips?

I received my XL upgrade kit (box was huge) and I’m going to disassemble and put it together this weekend. Any tips/tricks/suggestions? Ed told me there wasn’t instructions yet for the upgrade and to follow the XXL assembly. Just wondering if smarter people before me had any best practices :smiley: Have a great weekend everyone

Tim Foreman wrote up his upgrade here: http://timf.anansi-web.com/wp/shapeoko-3-xl-upgrade-part-1-long/

My notes are here: http://www.shapeoko.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=8332

Some discussions here:

And watch Winston’s new video

So I’m running belts, X axis is fine. But running the Y axis belts, with the new clips with self tapped holes and bigger screws don’t seem to work. The only hole the screw can fit in would make the belt not straight on t he Y rail. I guess I should just use the old belt clip and m3 screws and nuts?

How about a picture showing us HOW the new screws and clips won’t (don’t) work.

The two small holes to the left are what i used before and lined the belt with the pulleys straight, the new belt clip screw only fits in the hole pictured.

For my XXL upgrade, I drilled out the sliver between the existing holes to make a slot. That worked perfectly. If you do not want to drill it out, support will tell you to use the old clips, which will work but are much harder to adjust than the new.

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I ended up drilling out between the existing holes to make a slot. then i was able to use the new clips.

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I used the old clips on my X axis. I do like the new ones better though.

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Awesome Photo!

Since this was an upgrade kit, the end plates (that black thing in the bottom of the photo) is probably the old plate, right?

If you said, right (or yes), use the old clips and little tiny (difficult to handle with my big fingers, screws). It is what I did when I upgraded (my belts).

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The new one are far superior I think, but my luck today (lost a washer for 2 hours and didn’t have a replacement, but i found it). I will just use old clips instead of drilling. Thanks guys. I got to finish before wife asks what i’m doing down here :smiley:

Another quick question. Where do I mount the controller? There is no holes on the new Y rail.

For the XL upgrade from an older style machine:

  • re-use the original belt anchor clips for the X-axis (or drill out in-between the M3 holes so as to use the new ones)
  • the electronics move to the side of the machine on the XL/XXL — you’ll need to swap around the extrusions to accommodate that.

For any work on the machine:

:sob: face meet palm

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Don’t sweat it — I think I dis-assembled and re-assembled by Shapeoko 1 three times before I had it together right — replacing a single extrusion should be simple enough:

  • prop up the gantry
  • remove the V-wheels from that side
  • remove the extrusion
  • install the new one
  • replace the V-wheels
  • remove the prop
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That would have been easier than what I did but I got it replaced without taking everything apart. And Fedex just came with my missing Homing Switches. Thanks Ed for Overnight shipping them! :slight_smile:

I had a set of M3 screws and M5 I had bought, of course no washers :confused:

Yeah, I can’t count the number of times I’ve had my various Shapeoko’s apart for some upgrade or another.

The threaded holes are well worn in. :smile:

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One gem that I found helpful in one of the early documentation versions was when attaching belts to leave a ~“1/4” gap between clip and frame before final tightening (it worked well for me)… Unsure if the latest assembly instructions contain this.

I always enjoy Winston’s videos… thanks for linking that @RichCournoyer

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Good question . . . so how did you mount the controller board?

@JimInAshland
The next post answered that question.