Missing feet in package

CNC Machines Shapeoko
8

You should get leveling feet I believe. I got them with my SO3 received a week ago. But to be honest, they are pretty annoying and the first thing I did was get rid of mine. They are hard plastic feet and the machine kept sliding around on my desk, plus they didn’t come with jam nuts so they kept turning when the machine vibrated or moved.

Here is what I did instead. This requires that you have a workbench you don’t mind drilling holes in:

  1. Go to the local hardware store and get the following:
  • Four M5x40mm all thread bolts
  • Twelve M5 nuts
  • Four M5x15mm fender washers
  1. Remove the wasteboard from your machine. Drill out the corner holes on the wasteboard to fit over the M5 bolt heads.
  2. In each corner threaded hole on the steel front and rear rails, run a M5x40mm bolt down from the top, put a little thread locker on them and torque them down.
  3. Run an M5 nut up each bolt from the bottom, put a little thread locker on the base of the bolt where it exits the steel rail, and torque the nut. This functions as a jam nut to prevent the bolt from backing out. This is probably overkill but I did it anyway.
  4. Take the machine and place it where you want it. Mark the locations of the four bolts, and drill a hole down through the desk at each location.
  5. Put two more M5 nuts loosely onto each of the four bolts from the bottom. These will be your adjustment and jam nuts.
  6. Put a fender washer over each of the holes in your desk, and drop the machine down into these holes, resting on the adjustment nuts over each fender washer.
  7. Reinstall the wasteboard.
  8. Level as usual using the adjustment nuts. Once you have it level, tighten the jam nuts to lock in the position.

You could probably run some nuts and washers up from underneath the desk as well if you really want to make it solid. I may do this at a later date. Some rubber washers might also be good for vibration isolation.

This worked really well for me. It made assembling and working on the machine much easier. I highly recommend something like this instead of the feet the machine comes with.

1 Like