Hi All,
Purchasing my Shapeoko XXL this week however the supplier has had an issue for months with DeWalt routers. I am in the UK and just want to confirm which routers are my options as there is a few with ‘C’ and ‘L’ at the end of them. the UK supplier Robosavvy.com does not stock the reducer ring for the Makita routers.
Alternately, you can make your own adapter by purchasing some 70mm diameter 2mm wall thickness tubing, cutting it to length, cutting a slot in it to match the side opening on the mount, deburring or filing it smooth.
That’s everything ordered.
Had to order my BitZero directly from Carbide 3D as UK suppliers saying January for delivery and with shipping it was still about £50 less!
looking forward to getting started!
There is normally a customs charge on the goods from the USA to UK, plus in many cases about £10 “because we can” fee from the courier for handling the customs charge.
yeah I understand that there might but waiting until January wasn’t an option for me. Also its nice to have part of the machine come directly from the manufacturer.
It’s still cheaper and faster for most of the smaller things than the UK / Euro resellers. I bought my XXL from Robotshop but the HDZ and other stuff direct from Carbide.
Yeah ive purchased my machine from Robotshop in France, comes with Zplus as standard, router from Amazon as its the only place with stock thats not stuck in customs and my BitZero from Carbide so will be a nice chunk of parcels coming!
Handed my old workbench to my father the other day, timber arrived today for new frames, still need to figure out enclosure as the machine will be in my garage thats part of my house so need a bit of sound deadening! not expecting silence but just lower!
Any sort of enclosure will help, much of the aggravating noise is high frequency from the router and the dust extraction (you didn’t forget the extraction did you?)
There’s a couple of threads about damping down the noise;
Thanks Liam,
I will have a read through them tonight. I haven’t forgotten about extraction however I have been doing all my wood working up until now with my Henry Hoover so I will continue to do so until I figure out the best option for a dust extractor in my EU garage, 8.5Ft x 18ft.
I plan to cut a hole in the top of my enclosure, manufacture a large rubber grommet and feed the hose through there. the standard henry hose is probably too stiff so I will have to purchase something a bit looser!
Great, Thanks for that. I have been looking at cyclones thinking it will be the better option and I will have the space under the bench for it anyway!
as for the hose, I wont be able to order anything until I know how long it needs to be!
I do however think that sound reduction on the machine is going to be my biggest problem, I wont be using it in the evenings/nights so using it during the day while im working on other things, ive got a piece of thick firm carpet that I intend to put on the floor of the enclosure to reduce how much vibration the machine makes. The gantry being level with the spoilboard is more of a concern to me than being level with the workbench.
would you suggest having the bench sitting on something or wheels to reduce any vibration into the floor as its a concrete foundation that the benches will be siting on.
The machine by default sits on four feet at the corners which you could sit on carpet or rubber.
You may well find that you want to help out the baseboard as it’s a little less rigid than desirable on the XXL. I ended up bolting mine directly to the table to help the rigidity. A more rigid machine tends to vibrate less and make less noise anyway.
The concrete floor is a good isolation point for vibration, some vibration isolating feet on the bench would likely do a good job of that.
Given the concrete floor the noise sources you’re most likely to want to deal with are;
Router whine
Henry
Cutting noise
In my experience it was in that order too.
Any enclosure is likely to help with the higher frequency noise.
Remember that you need to be able to get to most of the parts of your machine so try to make it so that you can remove the upper parts of the enclosure if necessary to get to the machine.
Hey Liam,
so in the last 48 hours I have designed my bench which will mainly be build from 2x4’s that I will glue and screw. 3/4" (18mm) MDF top, 18mm MDF sides supported by a piece of 2x4 in each corner’s vertical and I will glue them down and caulk the interior where the boards meet.
18mm top. Will make up a corner support for the 2 front corners and a 300mm wide piece of MDF on the sides at the back corners. This will allow me to put on a roughly 750mm door on each side as well as 2 doors on the front allowing me access from all sides except the back. I will complete the doors as a build the enclosure as im unsure on what is going to be the best option, i.e rubber/foam draft seals on the door edges or ones that close onto the face frame.
I bought 4 85mm rubber/nylon wheels, 2 with brakes that I will mount on to the bottom as more insulators.
Do you think bolting the machine down to the 18mm MDF top would benefit me with less vibration noise?
I’m guessing I could take the feet out and just screw it down to see. Would 18mm be enough in this case? the top will be glued and screwed down to a 2x4 frame consisting of 2 front to back and 1 across the middle in an offset pattern.
I built a torsion box out of fairly cheap grade plywood (similar cost to MDF). It’s glued and screwed at the joints. Everything but the legs is plywood to avoid warping caused by regular wood expanding and contracting, MDF would do the same.
This one is way deeper than it needed to be, even just a couple of inches deep ends up being surprisingly rigid, the key thing is a top and a bottom plate with some bracing to hold them at a fixed distance from each other.
I suspect that just bolting the machine to a surface will likely form a more rigid structure, but if the surface isn’t fully flat this might cause the machine to change shape as the surface does.
Got any pics of what you’re planning to build?
As for the doors and sealing, I never got round to putting the top on mine so I can’t really advise on that, there are loads of threads where people have made excellent enclosures though, as well as a couple of Winston Moy videos on YouTube;
ill put up a screenshot on here later tonight of my design. I was thinking about a torsion box however I am trying to build the benches hastily due to limited time on day off work to get them built.
Like I say ill pop up a screenshot or 2 later and see what you think. I think with an MDF top on top on top of the framework will be fine however another layer on the bottom of the worktop framing might assist against any deformation in future. my garage is dry and virtually air tight so not something i need to worry about too much.
So this is what I am proposing, I am not sure if the area I have marked with Red is going to be enough across the bench in order to be strong enough or if I would be better with 2 evenly spaced going across the width.
The small pieces of 2x4 on the bottom is where I will be fixing my 90mm casters.
As for the enclosure I intend to make it out of 18mm MDF and will mount 2x4’s in each corner the height of the walls to give me something to screw the MDF into as well as gluing them together at the corners.
Thoughts??
