Running out of cut space

I bought the Nomad over the larger machines on purpose as I wanted the extra rigid machine with tight tolerances but now that I have been using it for a short time I am already wanting a larger area to work with and then I had an idea. I can double the workspace in 1 direction. I wanted to make some boards with pockets as jewelry holders but can’t fit enough of them on a 8x8 so I am going to use a 16" board, leave half of it hanging out of the front of the machine, turn it around then cut the pockets in the other half.

I know it will be tricky to get things to line up exactly but other than that, is there any reason not to do this?

Or has anyone here already done this?

Just a thought…

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It’s called tiling or indexed cutting and folks do it on the Shapeoko quite a bit: https://wiki.shapeoko.com/index.php/Fabrication_Techniques_%26_Hardware#Tiling

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@FlatBaller Modified his Nomad for tiling.

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You could also take off the back and pass (adequately supported) stock through with tiling. (I don’t remember Flatballer’s mods, and haven’t looked at the foregoing link yet, so maybe this is already mentioned…)

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Maybe someday we’ll get a 12" x 12" Nomad. I’d buy one today. :blush:

Can’t drag it up today but on Instagram I had noticed somebody had made a table replacement that extended as far as possible in the X axis, including an interesting slot to accomodate the tool length probe. Y axis length looked about the same as the X. Obviously the tool can’t reach all of that area but I suppose good to support/clamp extra sized stock? Not sure about rigidity but made some brain cells fire.

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