Having taken everything out now, it’s clear that the box was dropped/smashed/whatever and the pieces fell out. They threw everything back in and taped it up. Half the foam supports in WIll’s picture are missing in the gantry box. The other box seems better, but was clearly opened and repacked as one of the rear folds was pushed inside the box instead of on top of the contents if that makes sense, unfortunately the main penetration impact was right on a ballscrew so I’m worried about that.
I guess I have to put it together and see if it moves straight
In my experience, you can’t speak of shipping companies as monolithic wholes — there are a lot of moving parts, and the condition of a given package is contingent on:
the place receiving/truck and worker making the pickup
the hub it initially goes to
the hub it is shipped to
the folks actually making the delivery
as well as what other packages are around the package during shipment.
YMMV, &c.
Hopefully the folks who are receiving SO5 Pro boxes today can let us know the state of things at support@carbide3d.com — any information is helpful, including “It arrived perfectly okay”.
I’ve had better luck shipping heavy machinery and heavy silver via Purolator. They don’t seem to go through a hub, once it’s on that truck it arrives on that truck or a local van. The caveat is you better be home, if you miss the delivery it’s a long drive to their depot.
Why in the hell would you try to put that together? Get a UPS claim started from one end or the other and leave the package alone. An insurance claim is at risk.
ADDED: And you should have refused it as soon as you saw what it looked like. Now, that’s water under the bridge.
My wife was the one there when they delivered unfortunately.
I’ve begun a claim through UPS though I have little faith that will amount to much.
The damage is mostly bent pieces of metal, so it will be hard to know how bad it is until it’s put together, and I had to take it all out to start a UPS claim anyways.
My boxes were also mangled and taped back shut. However, after opening with the UPS driver all the internal foam and packaging was there and the parts appear to be unharmed. Excellent packaging job with the foam.
UPS would not have accepted that package in that condition. It is all UPS. Sometimes instead of carrying your packages in the truck they drag it behind the truck. C3D has shipped a lot of machines and we do not see this kind of damage here on the forum. I am sure C3D will make it good and I know it is bummer to get your machine in pieces but UPS does not care what they do to packages they just mangle them and then him and haw and say shucks it is someone else’s fault. BS. It is all UPS all the way. I would not try to assemble the machine. Even if it works, which it likely wont, you will always have a sour taste in your mouth over this.
Also noticed that all the steppers in the assembly video have dual shafts. Are all the retail models that way? I see a pretty cool upgrade in the future.
Once upon a time I was a shipping coordinator at an architectural veneer manufacturer (stupid expensive textured plywood for boat cabinets), and one of the cool tools we had was a strapping machine. You push a box through it and it whips a nylon strap around it, and heat seals it. The straps would give shippers something extra to hold onto, and it would also show you if you had support issues inside, as you could crush a box with it. The cardboard you guys are using looks like a really sturdy size, but maybe there needs to be some more support in the center.
Edit: Forgot another great device we used, made by Instapak. It’s a polyurethane bag system for packing unusual shapes. You fill a bag with a predetermined percentage of their chemical mix, then press it around an item. Within about 10 seconds it expands and hardens to protect the item. It’s nice because you don’t have to stock multiple sizes of packing material, and you can make custom packing jobs on small runs. Any heavy boxes are going to be at the bottom of the pile in the truck, so this would help keep the box from being crushed.
That is soooo disappointing and sad. Definitely looks like shipper’s fault, but those boxes could use some strapping around them to keep everything inside. Not sure you want to try to put it together with mangled up pieces. Something is liable to go flying off. Sorry you are going through this. What a pain.
The Shapeoko 5 Pro electronics have a dedicated laser port on them with everything electrically isolated and integrated into the firmware. The port only goes active when you enter laser mode with a $31=1 (Or whatever that setting is)
We made some modifications to the firmware:
$31 (or $32, I forget) does not persist to EEPROM so the laser mode is cleared on a restart or when you set it back to 0
When in laser mode the spindle port is disabled and the PWM output goes the the laser. When in milling mode, the laser port is disabled.
In laser mode, the output PWM is always scaled to 1000, so you do not need to reset the RPM range when entering or leaving laser mode.
Basically, this means that you do not have to redo the settings in GRBL every time you run a laser and it should be a better experience.
We will likely not be making a laser on our own, but we are working with a vendor to make a “Carbide Certified” laser that will be plug and play, and will be able to run directly from CM. We don’t have a timeline or exact specs on this yet.
I’ve told a lot of people that I’m not a fan of putting a laser on these machines, but if you’re going to do it, this is going to be the best way.
