An update on the Shapeoko 3 dolly

Hey gang, awhile ago I figured out (and posted to here) that the dewault table saw stand (DW7440RS) fit under the shapeoko 3 and made it super easy to move around for those of us with little shops. I wanted to give a year update on how it’s been working.

TL;DR it works great, just don’t mount the shapeoko directly to the frame and remember to have everything at $HOME before you lift the dolly.

First thing to know, I have a very tiny shop. 11ft x 10ft and I share the middle of it with a bunch of HVAC gear and a water heater, so I have to take my S3 outside to use it. Sucks, but first world problems.



Mounting the S3 to the stand was a huge boon for me, but I started running into problems that I had thought were unrelated. I stopped being able to cut a square, I started getting nasty level differences during passes in facing operations. I could live with it for a little while, but as I started moving to aluminum it became less of an issue that sand paper could compensate for. It turns out that mounting the S3 directly to the saw mounts caused some racking, building a small 2x4 frame to mount the dolly to and then bolt the S3 onto got everything back to square.

Having the S3 on wheels is great, but I still have to drag around a laptop and tether to it which means now I’m bringing a 5 gallon bucket to set the laptop on, trying not to trip on cords, etc. CNCJS and a raspberry pi came to the rescue here. At the front of the machine I mounted the S3 power brick and the pi. I then zip tied all the wires up to the controller and, when I power on the S3, the pi boots up and is available over a web interface on my wireless. No more laptop, just upload gcode and go.

The last little bit was needing a way to keep essential things like wrenches and my touch probe on the machine. I picked up a $5 magnetic tool mount plate and a plastic screw tube, zip tied and double sided tape those to the side of the S3 frame and now i know exactly where those parts at least SHOULD be.

The last thing to do is I need to wire in an emergency power off on the mains line. The only issue I continue to have is that I need to remember to send the S3 to $HOME before I fold up the dolly. If I don’t, the carriage goes slamming down towards the bottom (thanks gravity) and I cringe mightily. Hope this helps someone else with a tiny shop and big ambitions!

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I feel your pain Bro! I have a 12’ x 12’ shop / shed, unheated (abandoned in the wintertime here). I too have to be very crafty when it comes to adding more goodies into the shop! Maybe someday I’ll post some pics on how you can house so many hobbies into such a tiny space!

Great thinking outside your box, man!

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Is that a standard, XL, or XXL?

Looks really nice

standard, but the same mount will fit up to an XL, it will just hang off the edge a bit.

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I’ve got an XXL. Oh well.

I like this idea. Just wondering if increase risk of throwing the machine out of square. Have you noticed any issues with the accuracy of your Cuts?

It was out of square before I made the frame to mount it to. Once I mounted it up to the 2x4 frame it was nice and solid and I’ve had 0 issues. I’m trying to talk myself into upgrading to an XL, so we’ll see if it still holds true or if I need something more beefy.

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