Luke
Thanks for your reply.
I’m looking at the beaver upgrade for a couple of reasons.
First, I’m working in plastics a lot and getting melting problems with my Dewalt611. I have a feeling 16K RPM may be simply too fast to get really good and consistent results. In addition, I hope in future to mill aluminum and copper, so I need a goodly amount of torque. This all makes me think of a 2.2 kw water cooled spindle which requires an 80 mm mount and weighs some five pounds.
Second, I have some (admittedly slight) problem with tramming and haven’t been able to resolve it by fussing about with my Y-axis rails. This makes an easy-to-tram Z axis plate interesting. I’d like to know more about this feature.
I’d also like to see step by step conversion instructions. I read somewhere (earlier) that someone had problems with screw holes that were not precisely aligned. I’m assuming any such problem has been taken care of, but I’d like to be certain.
I’d also like to know a bit more about the mount. As you doubtless know, the Dewalt 611 takes a 60 mm mount which comes with the Shapeoko. Do you plan some sort of adapter so I could start out with the Dewalt and later shift to the spindle? Might be a bit easier on the budgeting if I didn’t have to handle both at once.
And, of course, when do you contemplate having stock?
I was in a similar situation, in the “16K is too much” sense and went a similar route. I ended up going with a 1.5KW air-cooled spindle, the HDZ and the spiffy no-touch limit switches. My spindle is the same diameter as the Makita router, so I am using it with the provided ring.
I mention this because you were asking about the mount - I’m using the stock mount right now; it goes on the HDZ without an issue. So you can definitely do things in stages.
I had no issues at all with the installation; no misaligned holes, no missing parts, linear rails were nicely aligned out of the box, the whole thing. I’ve been extremely happy with the whole thing. And yes, the easy-tram plate is very nice indeed. Shim to get the rotation around X sorted, then the eccentric nuts to get rotation around Y - very simple and friendly.
I don’t mean to dissuade you by any means from getting the HDZ or a spindle, I just want to make it so you might be able to have better solutions in the future to problems you are seeing now, whether you stay with what you have or with the HDZ.
Plastics melting -> You should get a single flute endmill. I run acrylic and polycarbonate at 20,000 RPM with a single flute at fast feedrates (1500 mm/min) with no melting. It makes a world of difference in plastics.
Aluminum and copper -> Totally doable on a Dewalt DWP611, I have the same router and mill aluminum often. Not that much torque needed but definitely more is appreciated.
Rick
Thanks much. Gives me a bit more confidence. Not necessarily enough to take the plunge, but a bit 
Jonathan
Thanks much. I did try a single flute earlier without a great deal of success, but perhaps I had the wrong feeds and speeds. I’ll try your settings and see what happens…
Hey Paul, I will try and answer all of these to help you:
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Plastic melting could be the wrong bit style, as Jonathan mentions try a single flute and dial the speed down to around 12k. I think thats my “go to”.
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The EZY Tram can be seen/explained here Noted this is only on the smaller mount.
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I don’t know anything about holes mis-aligning. That might refer to a user error, but we have never had any kind of hole QC problem that I can recall on the HDZ.
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The mount is a beast. I originally had a spindle manufacture adapt one of theirs, however the quality was hit and miss and we had to junk allot of them. In the end I made the decision to go to a full machined mount - yep we machine down a giant chunk of aluminium! It’s one of the highest quality mounts out there.
Stock wise, @robgrz made my morning and setup the HD category in the store last night.
https://shop.carbide3d.com/collections/shapeoko-hd/hd
It looks like we’re back instock, added the mounts, added the suckit ears and the HDEccentric nuts
Looks like full stock at the moment. Hope it is still that way when I order next week!
We should have plenty in stock going forwards
Haha this excites me probably more than it should 
I got this one: https://www.amazon.com/1-5KW-Cooled-Spindle-Variable-Frequency/dp/B010N3HFGU
I don’t have a tremendous amount of time with it, but I have no complaints so far. It is very quiet (certainly as compared to the router - quiet enough that the cut noise overwhelms it), is relatively light and, as noted, will fit in the stock mount. That fit what I was looking for as I didn’t want to deal with separate cooling - we’ll see whether I come to regret that choice or not.
I will echo @The_real_janderson comments on the real need for a spindle and or HDZ for cutting plastics, aluminum, brass or copper. The cheap route besides using a single flute would be to purchase a Makita router that would give you 10 to 30K speed range. I also have an EasyTram and it makes it simple to tram along the X axis but you have to use shims to trim along the Y axis but it is fairly simple job. The plans were/are available at BeaverCNC.
Now I wish @Luke would look at a proper solution for adjusting all axis tramming for a future release of the Shapeoko and/or a retrofit.
Ohhhhhhh Noooooo…now you’ve done it! Jinxed yourself!
+1!
I’ve had enough of folding aluminum foil for front/back shimming 
Thank you. I discovered that the original Spec NEMA are not powerful enough to drive the CNC pro. I thought about going with the HDZero spec, But didn’t want to have to contend with the 220 power supply.
Hey Ken, you could also use one of these:
@The_real_janderson - what specific end mill do you use for acrylic & polycarbonate? I cut the same materials at 38IPM at the lowest speed on the DWP611. I’ve tried higher speeds & feeds without much luck & would love to get up near where you’re at.
Just watched the installation video on YouTube from Mr. Beaver for the HDZ. Very informative and I think I’m ready to purchase one.
For those who haven’t seen it the link is here:
Question - the forums and carbide 3d site state there are 270mm height required to fit the HDZ in an enclosure. In the video it is mentioned that the HDZ is in ver 3.3, and I’m noticing the spacers located on top that hold the z axis motor are no longer there. Is the height requirement still 270mm or has this decreased with the removal of these spacers?
Thanks
Hi Michael
Excellent point, yes on 3.3 you can take 40mm odd the figure and as a rough guess you would need 230mm from the top of the X rail.
If it would help I’m more than happy to photograph and measure my half-enclosure so you can see how much spare space you get?