Luke. We’re a CNC machine shop in Texas with a VF-6 and more. Feel free to message me so we can help you out with the rails sitaution.
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It’s possible. Obviously not a viable option for the business at this point. Hopefully they can find a way to make it work as there is demand for it. Until then the competitors get the business.
I’d suggest that the Shapeoko Pro is the machine base which would be sensible starting point for the XXXXL size, if any.
The extrusions on the XXL are already at, or possibly beyond, the sensible upper limit of lenth for that extrusion cross-section. The same goes for the belts, as the machine gets larger the rigidity, accuracy, cutting speed, vibration etc. all degrade unless measures are taken to mitigate this. It’s also not linear, it gets rapidly worse as the axes get longer.
I’d want to replace at least the X beam extrusion with something chunkier for a 4ft or 5ft cutting width. I’d also want the Y extrusions reinforced to the baseboard as per the Pro. Once you’ve done that you’d probably want at least 15mm belts, for which motors with 8mm shafts are a better bet but bigger steppers need bigger drivers and so on.
The SO3 is quite well balanced in terms of matching the structure, linear motion parts, motors, controllers etc. as a set. Once you start to push one part you end up on a slippery slope as you find that all the others are now undersized compared to your upgrade.
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You make a fair point and I absolutely agree that both the SO3 and Pro in all variants are very well balanced machines. They cop a lot of flak for using belts but given who they’re marketed at I see no problem with it at all. Many people here have proven belts are more than capable.
I don’t think that a 48x48 pro machine would be a massive stretch though, the competitors run with a similar sized extrusion (arguably less rigid) and users seem pretty happy with it. Hard to say whether the 15mm belts would be an issue or not, my gut says they’d be ok at 48"
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