My Shapeoko 5.1 Pro will be delivered later today. I have been listening to the training videos to prepare. I was wondering, to those of you who have been working with Carbide 3D equipment for several years, what do you seggest I work on during the next few weeks to become familar with the equipment and the system?
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Everything you need to know should be at:
esp. see:
The customers who seem to be the most successful are those who do:
as well as the follow-ons:
Some folks have found some of the tutorials at:
helpful.
If there’s something else you want to know, please let us know and we’ll gladly look into this with you.
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I put mine together in January and let me just say that it was an unpleasant experience. Frustrating to say the least. I was using the only available directions at the time as the 5.1 guide was not available or at least I couldn’t find it. Yeah they’re similar but right out of the gate the base was different which started the trauma.
If you have any questions during assembly I may be able to help as it’s burned in my memory.
My suggestion is to buy cheap bits, scrap desk or shelves at the re-store. Use the wood to practice with. You are going to break your fair share of bits, you don’t cry as hard with the cheap ones. Reason?? it will teach you limits until you become familiar with design and cutting.
Remember, if you need help just call. AND also include the file you are having issues with.
Have fun!
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What kind of projects will you be working on? Here is a general list of things to think about.
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What tooling will you need for your projects? For wood projects, look at when you would use an upcut, downcut, or compression cutter. I have had good look with Spe Tools off of Amazon
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What is your dust collection plan?
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What design application will you be using? Carbide Create?
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You are going to make mistakes, you are going to break tools, you are going to have various problems with your projects. It is normal, take a breath, and walk away for a bit if you need. Then get back to it.
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On the computer that will run Carbide Motion: Turn off auto updates, and set it so it won’t go to sleep.
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I think the best thing for me was to have a basic goal and work your way to it. For instance a specific carve, or sign, or tray. Take each step to increase your knowledge to get to that point. It will take you a long time to get to a successful final carve on that first one (depending on how complex that goal carve is), but the next one will be 10 times easier.
For example, the reason I purchased my 5.0 Pro over a year ago was to create a specific style of name sign, matching EXACTLY what the existing signs were. To get to that first sign that is hanging now, it took me a LOT of hours. I started out with one letter and gradually worked my way all the way to the product I’m extremely proud to say we made. That first sign took me over a month of working on it every night after I got home from work. Now it takes me 2 minutes to produce the proof, 15 minutes to design the carve, and then minimal monitoring if my CNC to produce a consistent, perfect product every time.
All that to say, struggle is the precursor to extreme satisfaction with these wonderful machines.
Ask questions in this community (we THRIVE on helping each other out!!), get your free four 1/2 training sessions with the support team, work along with the tutorial videos. And just keep creating. The more hours you have on your machine, the more successful you will become.
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