Relocating Cross beam to forward mounting holes

To gain additional functionality with the Shapeoko 5 Pro the cross beam can be located forward to the front set of bolt holes in the bearing blocks. This adds about 3 inches of overhang over the front of the spoil board/table. After doing this you move the entire system to the front edge of the table you have your machine sitting on and the spindle will hang over the front table edge about 3 inches. I did this so I could drill mounting and dowel holes in board edges of my projects. I built a couple of jigs with T-Track in them so that I can clamp my boards so the edges are facing up. I then create a jig in Carbide Create Pro and run the job as usual. Using Bit Zero isn’t an issue and works great for getting the spindle to drill exactly down the middle of the board edge. Other uses are cutting slots or dove tail cuts on board edges. Just create a jig in software to cut the board edge the way you want. This has been a game changer me.

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Not many of us have used that feature… but to those that do, it’s invaluable. :slight_smile:

The formal term for this is “gantry shift”:

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Thanks for the feedback and proper terminology. I didn’t use the drag chain extensions when I moved my cross beam forward. The bend didn’t seem that extreme but I will add them to my drag chain to relieve a little tension in the bend. Also in my case I wanted to build a jig on the front of my table to utilize the overhang. The one thing that happened in my case was the loosening of the rear bolts after moving the beam, swapping the bolts and tightening them again. This caused the beam to skew coming out of the home position and that apparently caused a situation where it drove to the forward most travel and then tried to go further. Realigning the beam and tightening the bolts again solved that issue. Other than that this has worked out great for my use.

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