Mine should be shipping next week and I am really excited. However, I am concerned about eventually needing more clearance between the gantry and the spoil board. I’ve see other threads on how this was addressed in previous Shapeoko models, but none of those approaches appear to be compatible with the 5.
Is anyone in the community looking at this?
Thank you!
Yes I’ve read about it and it may do the trick for some cases but I could see running into y travel limitations
Hold tight, someone else will have more information then what ive given you. Lots of smart people here.
Do you mean clearance between the gantry and the hybrid table (Z clearance) or clearance between the router and the front of the hybrid table for vertical workholding situations? If you mean the first one, I think the biggest limitation will be Z axis travel. You could block up the gantry but your tool would not be able to use the additional space because you would need more Z travel.
it depends what you want to make, but removing an area of the spoilboard and creating an indexible gantry as shown in this video 3-sided rotary CNC routing with the Shapeoko - Carving a Koi fish - YouTube might work, but it’s all a trade off of Z travel, clearance and bit length. many factors to consider. What kind of project makes you want additional Z clearance?
Thanks everyone. Great to be joining such a helpful community
@Dooryard and @nwallace - I was mostly thinking of the use case where the clearance between the gantry and hybrid table is too small to support thicker work stock. Like carving something into a thick butcher block.
I have removed a slat before for a pen holder, but that was just the once, otherwise I haven’t needed too at all.
Removing slats, or installing shorter slats will get you a little bit.
I gotta believe that if it’s easy to move the gantry forward, it shouldn’t be too difficult to move it up.
Might involve some spacers, and possibly some longer bolts.?
Increasing height increases lever effects and will reduce rigidity.
Could I bolt the y-extrusions to the table and get rid of the cross pieces in order to have a cut out where the spoilboard would go to lower the work material?
It might be that sort of thing could be worked out in a way w/o compromising anything other than the warranty, but I don’t know.
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