My bed has a slight upward arc/bow – how to address it?

CNC Machines
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Greetings! I have an Shapeoko 3 XXL with HDZ, and I have realized that there’s an upward bow to the bed… I was cutting smaller/narrow pieces initially and didn’t notice for awhile, but as I’ve tried to work on a larger piece, it basically cuts much deeper towards the center of the bed.

The feet are all adjusted flat. I assume there is a slight bow built in to account for and support additional weight… but most of what I will cut will be less than 1" thick wood. I don’t need a ton of weight support. I need it to be flat, relative to the cutting plane.

Do I just use a surfacing bit and cut away at the spoilboard? I’m not fond of the fuzzy MDF core, if that’s exposed over the whole area — is there a better material suited for this?

Is there another way to get things more flat? How should I address this? Thanks, all.

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You hit on the appropriate procedure with using the machine to flatten the bed. It’s called surfacing the wasteboard and is standard operating procedure for almost any router with a wasteboard.

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There have been discussions on alternate materials for the spoilboard. I plan to try PVC trim boards when I need to replace.

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Okay thank you! That was my suspicion, but I just wanted to check with the community to see if there were other options.

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I think that the 3 does not have the hybrid board with the T Tracks right?

If not then PVC would require buying a sheet or doing a glueup of multiple pieces so that may not be as attractive of an option there.

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If your not happy with the finish after surfacing, you could put on a top coat like poly, shellac, wax…
or something like that.
:smiley:

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Yes, exactly what I was thinking!

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I’m of the opinion that a wasteboard is exactly that…for getting intentionally used and abused. So I don’t really pay attention to it’s surface as long as I don’t have too many tracks in it from previous projects. Then I just surface those out.

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