Anyone got an idea who might have the aluminium replacement bed in stock or the Shapeoko Standard (I am in UK)?

CNC Machines Shapeoko
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Title says it all - seems to be out of stock everywhere - wondering if there might be the odd european or other store that has one lying around!

Failing that open to other ideas!

Ta
Chris

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You could buy a big ol chunk of EcoCast tooling plate cut to size and drill it yourself?

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Thanks for the idea but I wont have my workshop setup for a year or so so have no way to drill anything like that. Right now just working on building the Shapeoko and getting it running nicely - a cool project to spend doing over winter!

Best
Chris

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4

Well,

If you’re just building, unless you have a really specific need for the Aluminium baseboard I might just wait and buy that later on.

If you need to get into heavy work on Aluminium with modular vices and stuff and you’ve got HDZ and spindle then yay, accessorise away, otherwise, I might wait.

HTH

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I have actually got the HDZ coming - just thought might be easier to do the base at the beginning rather than having to dismantle and rebuild later that’s all :slight_smile:

Best
chris

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6

I might be a little biased but a fixture tooling plate can be a great investment for even a stock machine with Z plus and Makita.

The SMW plates are niiiiiiiice :wink::grin:

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There’s always the Saunders Machine Works stuff (like Vince says), it looks very good but the shipping and import might be expensive;

I’d put the machine together and get the hang of squaring, tramming etc. first. Pulling out the baseboard for the SMW one isn’t that monstrous a job for later and you’ll likely be better at squaring and tramming the machine then anyway.

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Just a note to say, be careful with Aluminium Warehouse, there are a few customer experiences with them related on the mycncuk forum, including one user who has changed their signature to be their comment on AW’s customer service.

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I’d be happy to help out a UK user. I always enjoy a aluminium project :slight_smile:

Just to mention I’d try to get hold of Mic 6 rather than cut sheet.

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You say you have no way to drill a blank plate but your building a machine that’s capable of drill for you.

You could always use a hand drill for the mounting boots then use the machine to drill/bore all your hold down holes. Bonus points if you use a thread mill to tap them. But you could always tap by hand or use the router to hold the tap and a wrench to turn it.

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7000 series refers the the grade. 6061 would be fine, I think over in Europe we refer to it as tooling plates.

Just to set expectations if all goes to plan I’m moving the “UK office” :wink: in a couple of weeks so can’t make anything till mid December - assuming all goes to plan.

I do have various baseboard designs from the beaver days.

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