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.
I’m not sure right now.
The thing is that I’ve been trying to take cuts that are theoretically within the specified capabilities of the spindle and the cuts are unsuccessful, there’s a ton of ugly noise that I assume is chatter.
The limiting factor could be power, cutting speed, rigidity, or just lack of coolant, I just don’t know.
My wish is to have a machine that allows me to use the feeds and speeds recommendations from tool manufacturers though and the 24k bump certainly helps.
I suspect most tool manufacturers provide recommendations tuned for the big & bulky & expensive pro machines, so I don’t know if this is a realistic expectation? Not trying to rain on your parade, but I feel that physics (weight/rigidity) will get in the way of a quest for a sub-4K machine that would hog metal without blinking. And then again with @Vince.Fab and the like pushing the limits all the time, who knows…
I’m sure @wmoy can tell us the differences as he’s spent lots of time with both machines.
The new and improved AB nuts should make a world of a difference. And I wouldn’t get so hung up about the recommendations from tool manufacturers. They for sure didn’t use a Nomad to come up with them.
I’m not so sure it’s out of the question. There’s another desktop CNC floating around that showed that you can fit a 2.2kW spindle, ballscrews, linear rails and flood coolant into a frame rigid enough for steel, for $2800 USD.
It’s not the recommendations so much as the Nomad being unpredictable. Like, if I take the chip load number from the manufacturer, it’s usually pretty reasonable, say 0.015mm for Aluminium usually. When I take that chipload and use a feeds and speeds calculator programmed with the Nomad’s capabilities, it spits out a cut that should work but doesn’t.
I think the biggest issue with oldNomad is the spindle speed though and Nomad 3 has resolved that, so I have high hopes, even though it isn’t so crazy powerful as the stuff you’ve done.
Actually Vince, do you have any way of seeing how much power your spindles/routers use when making heavier cuts? I’d be really curious to see that data.
Some are also making tools that are compatible with the high speed low power spindles available for those mills. “There’s no limit to how fast aluminum can be machined.” Higher speeds reduce forces which likely helps explain @Vince.Fab’s apparent “need for speed.”
Sounds right to me! Who knows the tool capabilities better than their manufacturers?
How about your cuts?
I’m hoping the Shapeoko Pro will have dual Y axis homing switches/endstops, to allow for ‘auto squaring’. If this hasn’t been considered for the final production, will you please add it?
On another note, how is the Onefinity cnc able to offer ballscrews on all axes at a pricepoint lower (Canadian company no less, so their parts costs would most likely be higher)? I do wish belts were completely removed.
Would be nice if the HDZ with ballscrew was included instead of the Z plus with leadscrew.
I really like @DanStory HG15 rails more and I don’t think they would look out of place at all on the Shapeoko Pro. MGN rails are typically great for 3D printers.
Onefinity has lower costs in other areas of the machine that mean they can spend some more on ball screws.
No bed…at all.
Off the shelf round rails.
A BOM for the machine that looks like it uses 50 less parts.
An off the shelf controller.
Fewer electronics like homing switches.
Taking some design cues from the Onefinity would’ve been nice.
However, I’ve yet to see a non paid/freebie review for their CNC online.
I’m also very interested to see how the machine rigidity works out in the real, unpaid-for review world.
Those round rails only constrain in two dimensions and are separate elements which allow the cutting forces to leverage between them instead of being a single X or Y beam. Whereas, on the Shapeoko Pro the linear rails are on a single large axis beam extrusion with high rigidity and each rail allows only one degree of freedom. That’s a huge difference.
On the subject of ballscrews, not all ballscrews are created equal either, cheap ballscrews with cheap end mount bearings have both substantial backlash and can be quite inconsistent in movement distance over their length.
Belts have some significant advantages on a budget machine, way less motor power is needed as you’re not spinning up the screws, meaning cheaper electronics and cheaper motors. The design backlash in the GT2 belt profile is zero so far as a CNC router is concerned. Belts are much more forgiving than ballscrews too.
I’ve been looking closely at the Shapeoko deflections and how much can be attributed to the belts and it’s not much in terms of absolute accuracy.
To me the OneFinity ticks many of the boxes of the “Beginners’ guide to how not to design a CNC machine”, as said above, their BoM must be heavily skewed to the cost of the ballscrews, motors and electronics which means they’ve saved a lot of money elsewhere, in linear rails, no base frame at all etc.
The jury is very much out…
New machine looks great. If it was available back when I made my purchase, I certainly would have paid the difference. Belts, including the Z axis, have proven fine for me. The V wheels on the z and x, flexy x/z plates, and terrible bed, have proven inconsistent for my purpose. All told, its a machine I don’t care about crashing, and that is very nice. While hardly efficient, its proven useable and very informative.
I’d hazard a baseless guess that the sub 4’x(x) size is a factor of manufacturing capability, and most likely, common carrier shipping constraints. I enjoy having the little xxl to play with, and as much as I’d like to have the Pro instead, I don’t think its my next machine, even at 1/10th the entry level cost of what I am now actively shopping.
As for Hobby related stuff, The OneFinity does not look appealing to me at all.
So you disagree with the @AlexN Belt Stretch and Stepper Holding Measured post findings and the wisdom of using less stretchy GT3 or Kevlar belts?
Nope,
That post was most informative and what set me off doing the measurements.
What I’ve found though is that the V wheels are responsible for considerably more unwanted deflection than the belts are. There is a backlash mechanism in the machine, but it’s not just the belts.
Bigger better belts provide a number of benefits, less deflection on dynamic loads when cutting, less chatter etc. but that won’t necessarily have any effect on final accuracy in almost unloaded finishing passes.
The downside of the bigger belts is that they move the load further away from the stepper motor front bearing and increase the radial load on the stepper shaft which means you need to be even more careful to not gorilla tighten your belts trying to reduce backlash or deflection by winding up the static tension.
I’ve got a bunch of stuff to write up and post, which I need to do whilst I can still take V-Wheel measurements.
Awesome - looking forward to that! 
In the meantime, the Shapeoko Pro upgrade to the slightly wider belts and the MGN rails is, in my opinion, a really good choice based on price, size and utility. It’s close to what I’m doing based on the deflection measurements I’ve taken. The inclusion of a few other things like the flipped motors, wider X beam, Y rails outside the Y beams and the proper T slot bed make a really nice package which I expect will work really well for Shapeoko sort of jobs.
People who want to chase maximum MRR on a Shapeoko with a 2kW spindle will probably still want to mod it more, but even then, it’s probably a better place to start.