Wouldn’t pulleys that much longer require motors with longer shafts?
I was concerned on this point when doing my upgrade from 6mm to 9mm belts on my original SO3 — doubling the increase again seems a bit much — are the pulleys sufficiently stiff that this wouldn’t be an issue?
The setscew is located right on the beginning of the drive gear. I’m personally on a flipped motor setup so in any case the standoffs can be adjusted to suit. As long as the shaft diameter is the same.
@robgrz @Luke Shapeoko Pro questions:
What style and size rails are on the X and Y axis? (they look lower profile than typical HG15)
Is there one or two rails on the sides of the Y extrusions?
What is the overall footprint of the XXL?
What are the IPM rapids?
Is that Z-axis the Z-Plus (exact model)?
What is the bottom of Z-axis/gantry to table clearance?
(Stretching) would there [ever] be an offering of a bare bones machine (without electronics)?
Thanks @Griff! Also big tip of the hat to @edwardrford who was the lead on the Shapeoko Pro and knocked it out of the park, and @wmoy on all the work he put in leading up to the Nomad release.
Sorry I forgot @edwardrford and @wmoy! I remember exchanging a few emails with Edward “back in the day” when I received my SO3 with all its bags of screws, nuts, washers, wires, bits and pieces. Imperial and metric as i recall. Nothing pre assembled. Fun stuff!
MGN15. We looked at HG 15 but they’re out of proportion for this machine.
One rail on the Y, two on the X
I don’t think we have the parameters totally figured out yet. We don’t optimize for rapids much faster than what we currently have because we view it as a safety issue.
Nope, it’s different than the standard Z-plus.
Roughly 50" wide by 41" deep if I recall.
Roughly 4"
That’s not something we’d be likely to do.
That’s my favorite part of this machine.
Yep, it’s a very different place than where we started out.
Yep, any chance of that extrusion being made available to existing Shapeoko owners who want to upgrade their already reinforced beds?
It’s something we’re looking at. We have a few ideas about how to offer it but we need to work through it a bit more.
Great,
Remember we’re not averse to a bit of trial, error and modifications to make things fit.
There’ll be no grumbling about missing M3 bolts from this beta user 
I think I agree on your overall point here. It’d be great if the team was more open in the development. Not just so we know when/whether/what to purchase but also so we can understand what goes into making the machine and why it is the way it is.
As an outsider, lots of things look odd to me but I’m not a professional CNC machine designer like the Carbide 3D folks are. It’d really make me feel better about the Nomad if I knew why they didn’t use linear rails or ballscrews, or why the spindle is still only 150W. I’m sure there are valid reasons behind these choices but without knowing what they are, they’re just downsides to me and nudge me towards other machines that don’t have them, potentially to my own detriment.
For consumer products like iPhones, or for machines with some kind of secret sauce, I can kinda see the veil of secrecy being an important thing but for a more industrial tool like the Nomad that’s built on well-understood principles, I think a more open approach is well worth some consideration.
It’s called the “Osborne Effect” in business circles, named for the debacle that sank Osborne computers back in the day. After a hit with the Osborne 1 computer, the company began working on Osborne 2. Word got out that newer, better machine was coming, which killed sales of Osborne 1, which dried up funds to develop and deliver Osborne 2.
I was pissed because about 3 months after I bought a Sawstop Jobsite saw, they came out with Sawstop Jobsite Pro, for only about $100 more, and it had features I definitely would have waited for. But thems the breaks. I think we just have to understand that whenever you pull the trigger to buy, know that an upgrade is coming sooner or later. You have trade off value of having it now vs. value of waiting and maybe getting a better deal.
Here’s what Bantam claims for their really loud milling machine’s motor
" SPINDLE MOTOR POWER: 250W , 1/4 HP at the motor output shaft"
So, the maximum motor output is 0.25 X 745.7 = 186.4 W. The spindle drive (gears or belt?) and bearings will further reduce the spindle output power. Unfortunately, those hobbyist “in-runner” and “out-runner” motors are rated on input rather than output power like other types. So, depending on their relative efficiencies, the actual spindle powers available may not be that different on the two machines. The Bantam’s efficiency sounds pretty low to me.
I wonder what belts/pulleys the Nomad (and Bantam?) use to achieve those high speeds. Does the Nomad have an ER11 collet too?
I think a big thing to mention here is the constant improvement. From the day I bought my first shapeoko all the way through till this very moment, Carbide 3D’s goals is to make our machines, interactions and experience the very best they can be. I cannot count on how many changes the Shapeoko line has had over the past few years, and to be honest I don’t know how the team manage to constantly build in running changes into production and then support them. I’ve been here for over a year now and I’m still in awe of the people and the passion they have for making things great.
There will always be a new thing, feature, tool etc. We won’t stop developing and improving things, and most of the time we will try to do it in a way to be inclusive for all. In some cases we can’t do that and new models are born.
Whilst some projects take months or years, others will happen so fast it would make Elon blush. As Rob has mentioned our in-house manufacturing capability is growing stronger month on month and we hope to keep pushing the limits.
I can see that being a thing in some spaces but I don’t think everyone thinks like you do.
“Thems the breaks” is one way of looking at it but another way of looking at it is that the business is withholding information from its customers with the explicit intent of having them overpay for an inferior product. I’m not saying that’s Carbide 3D’s intention, just that that’s the behaviour the Osborne effect seems to encourage.
If I knew or felt that a company operated on such a principle, and I had any choice, I’d never buy from them again and I don’t think I’m the only one.
And besides that, if there’s a competitor, the concern shouldn’t be whether people are buying the old product or the new product, the concern is whether they’re buying your product. If you keep things to yourself too long, people are more likely to go to a competitor who announces things earlier.
Again, not saying this applies to Carbide 3D, just criticising the Osborne effect and the behaviour it encourages in general.
Yep,
As Alexander says, if you constantly announce “don’t buy our current product, there’s a way better one coming next month” your ability to exist and serve any customers at all is rapidly compromised.
Carbide has been pretty clear all the time I’ve been watching that they are in a state of continuous development and it seems they’re trying to put the continuous delivery ethos from software into hardware which is, shall we say, ambitious. I like it, and I hope they make it work, so much so that I occasionally make “suggestions” in threads that read like it’s my dev team not theirs 
I also like their level of tolerance for warranty voiding, equipment breaking users who come back and ask why their custom mod machine no longer works right with their standard software etc. That is unusual, in hardware or software businesses.
The Nomad 3 was pre-announced with quite a bit of notice and I thought at the time “Yikes, I hope they don’t have too much stock left in the supply chain”.
It’s never going to be possible to make machines that meet everyone’s sets of differing and conflicting demands of;
etc.
I’m as guilty as anyone else of rattling those fences, see my little pile of HiWin rails waiting for an adapter plate to come from Xometry.
Am I upset that the Shapeoko Pro has arrived as I’m halfway through the linear rail conversion? No, not really, buying a whole new machine would still be a lot more money than my planned upgrade.
Am I glad that there’s a more rigid option for people that want the precision or cutting speeds? Yep, sure, now people who don’t want to do the upgrade or pay 4x as much for the Avid can just get an off the shelf machine with a warranty that does an impressive job of spanning those mutually incompatible demands. The addition of “pro” and “HD” parts and configs is a great way to start covering some of those varied demands.
Unlike certain other companies, I very much get the impression that Carbide is trying to live up to their promises to their customers and do 
better, not just extract a few more $ for this quarter’s financial report. It’s a difficult line to straddle, running a business ethically, the way you think it ought to be and making the finance work at the same time and I think Carbide is doing a pretty good job of that.
If I knew or felt that a company operated on such a principle, and I had any choice, I’d never buy from them again and I don’t think I’m the only one.
It’s not a management philosophy that company chooses to adopt, it’s a reality of the market that companies have to be aware of, especially in new and growing market like CNC. Reality is we’re all still early adopters.
The spindle power increase was probably to support the spindle speed increase (more MRR without more force). Like a HF Spindle, the available cutting power will likely be proportional to speed. The 24,000 RPM is a godsend for everything except possibly some ferrous metals and Titanium. Maybe change the pulley ratio for them? 
Other than being limited to 10,000 RPM, do you think that the 70W spindle was a limiting factor on the current stock Nomad’s performance?
You can ask Luke how much I try to pry info out of him to no avail. I am 99% certain he considers me a pain in the arse. 
Here’s my take on product releases. This comes from a decade of experience in the automotive performance aftermarket, doing R&D, bringing products to market, and dealing with severe manufacturing delays. I’m as enthusiastic as the rest of us here, but I’ve also been an enthusiast that works in the field they’re enthusiastic about.
If you announce before a lot of things line up, you can get HAMMERED by one tiny thing getting delayed or a subcontractor not delivering. We literally had an exhaust on constant backorder for a couple of years. IT WAS EXHAUSTING! (Pun 100% intended.) For an ECU upgrade at first we had people send in their ECUs to us, we reprogrammed, and sent back. A programmer we could send out was always in works, but there was no way to announce it and set proper expectations. Also, as pointed out, that would have dried up the revenue that was paying for the hardware development, injection molding, electronics, softeare development, etc… so the programmer literally wouldn’t have happened otherwise because the money would have gone away. Just like in the Osborne example. It holds true and is not an ethical thing… it is driven by the consumer, not the producer.
We shot ourselves in the foot repeatedly until we learned to keep product development more under wraps until we were damn near ready to ship.
I get it. I really do. But it’s a fine line to walk, and the approach C3D took is better than announcing a new machine, then making people wait months to get it in my opinion.
also ,… most of the time you don’t know if a product is going to really pan out until late…
either due to challenges, or because you don’t know if a market will be there
Pretty clear cut answer from Sales that there is only the XXL size available and no custom sizes or plans to create bigger machines.
Literally the only thing I want different from my current XXL is a 48x48 or bigger work area so I can work efficiently with sheet material and cut longer parts.
The machines look great, I love the way you guys run the business, but you’re missing out on a market by not providing that [very slightly] larger work envelope.