Hello guys, I plan to upgrade my Shapeoko 4 XXL. I want to purchase the “HDZ” and " VFD Spindle Kit", but I have some questions about the limits of the machine that I would like to know since it might even be better to just sell this machine and purchase a newer more capable machine.
I understand the Shapeoko 4 isn’t recommended for milling big chunks of metal, but what about small projects? Is the Shapeoko 4 capable of this kind of detail in small pieces?
I would like to do bigger 3D carving jobs and guitars, one of the problems I face with this is machining time due to the limitation of size of my endmills. If I wanted to do a roughing toolpath for a 33" x 33" piece of wood, I would face 35 hours of machining just on that which is a big NO for me, the same problem applies for guitars.
As for the finishing toolpath I figured out that I could use a 1/8 endmill and still get good results (at least I hope) with a reasonable machining time of 10 hours (probably a bit more since I have to lower the “stepover”).
Depending on the alloy a it may be possible to do such cuts — that more something for a Nomad though.
What feeds and speeds are you using? With what tooling?
See:
for adjusting/optimizing feeds and speeds.
Some folks have used 8mm (5/16") tooling successfully and the added rigidity seems to be a big help — the ER-11 collet system in the VFD will allow that and the added torque may help in taking advantage of such tooling.
I’m even simpler, I just use the feeds and speeds in Carbide Create.
Since I work for Carbide 3D, I can’t really recommend tooling we don’t sell, and the only thing we have w/ an 8mm shaft is the McFly — I’ve used a couple of other tools in that diameter, but beyond their seeming to work well and be more rigid, can’t really report much.
But the difference between a 1/4 endmill and a 5/16 isn’t that much at the end… I can only think of splitting the Gcode into sections in order to being able to remove that much material in several days. Torture! haha.
Hello Will, sorry to bother you, but I would like to know how much would cost a CNC machine with enough rigidity to use a 1/2 endmill, do you have any idea? I searched but I couldn’t find anything (not super expensive). Thanks.
Or, arguably, any Shapeoko w/ an HDZ, an 80mm mount, and a spindle w/ an ER-20 collet — there are folks w/ such setups here, so hopefully someone who has done this will chime in.
I know we have 80mm mounts for the HDZ in our shop:
and an 80mm mount and matching spindle in development for the SO5 Pro, but no idea what the specifics of that will be.
As @WillAdams suggested an HDM or SO5 Pro is better for metal but the SO4 can do it. The SO4 is belt driven and not as stiff as the HDM and/or SO5 pro. With the ballscrew machines you can machine faster than an SO4.
The SO4 is quite sellable. I have sold a lot of equipment on craigslist and a lot of people that are on FaceBook sell in the market place.
So whether to upgrade or sell only you can answer but the SO4 is quite capable but the more heavy duty machines would be better in the long run if you are going to machine metal on a regular basis. For occassional use the SO4 would work. So to answer if you should sell or upgrade, Maybe?
