Minimum Clearance on top of enclosure for vacuum hose?

I have a 5 Pro 2 x2 and the technical drawings show a height of 26.5", which appears to be about 6" from the top of the machine. Is that enough height for the top of the enclosure?

You will want more, for loading stock, and to keep the hose from interfering.

And to keep from bumping the back of your head.

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Lean forward as if you are placing your stock or workholding on the machine. Measure the height to the top of your head :wink: (Yes, I made mine too short & have bonked my head a few times)
Then connect the dust collection hose & gently bend it to see at what height it will bind.
I’m thinking you want at least a foot above the machine, if not a bit more. :wink:

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@WillAdams @Chaotica @Tod1d, while you guys are here…do you guys think that 38" as seen above is wide enough for the machine and enclosure walls on each side? I don’t think I’m going to use the sides to hold anything - I just need the enclosure walls to have enough clearance from the side of the machine.

There isn’t any movement side-to-side of the parts save for the carriage, so that should be fine so long as you can gain access when needed for maintenance/cleaning.

Might want to round that up to 40" so the wiring harness has bending space without contacting against the enclosure.

Also, having extra space for sound dampening material mounted to the walls may be advisable if you’re planning to do that. I highly recommend Rockwool Comfortboard80 for sound dampening. It comes in a variety of thicknesses & is quite rigid which makes it easy to fasten with very few screws/washers. Plus it pretty much cannot burn which is an added safety factor.

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I just did my first tiling job. I wrote about my experience. Part of many peoples advise about enclosures is to make the sides and front and back about to be lifted up for maintenance and cleaning. The front is required to put material in and out of the machine but having the back accessible for doing tiling jobs. Right now you might now be thinking about tiling but with a small 2x2 machine and tiling you can produce much bigger projects. So I advise you to keep your options open and read my post at:

See the pdf attached in the post about the tiling information and why it would be a good idea to make the back open up easily.

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Does that material go inside or outside?

Any photos of the wiring harness on your enclosure?

In that case, would I have to make the enclosure larger to do a 36" long job?

What about the wiring harness as mentioned below?

You just make the front and back doors lift up and latch. On the occasion you make a tiling job you just leave the doors up. Then when the tiling job is done you just put them back down. Some people make enclosures for noise reduction because of neighbors or family but on occasion you can have the machine make some noise.

Even if you dont do tiling jobs having the front and back doors open and latch up/down would be handy for cleaning and maintenance.

I have a Shapeoko 3XL in an enclosure and would recommend more Z height above if you want a dust collection hose.

It would be difficult to determine the minimum distance above your Shapeoko 5, but here’s the twist that I didn’t know about when I built my enclosure. Once you know the range of motion your dust collection hose will need to support, that gives you a pretty good way to know the extended length of your dust collection hose. But what about it’s compacted length? Which is probably different for different types of dust collection hose.

For me, the tricky part was that compacted length (of dust collection hose), and needing enough area above my Shapeoko to support that length when the router is in the center of the machine.

For reference, my enclosure area has 30 inches in the Z axis and I’m not sure I could use the same setup if there was only 29 inches. I suspect the Shapeoko 3 is not as tall as the Shapeoko 5, at least it appears that way (have not seen any other Shapeoko with my own eyes).

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