I’m working through some design iterations for a Shapeoko Pro XXL enclosure and am curious as to the working height of the table surface. What has been successful and comfortable for folks? I plan on the working height being for standing and/or stool height.
I have the pro XXL on a table built on one of those home depot workbenches where you can crank the height up and down. I pretty much always leave it at waste/belly button height.
Mine is at 32", which I have found to be convenient when you have to lean into the machine work area. The XXL is deep, try measuring the height of a table you have and see if you can comfortably grab something that is 1m away from the edge of that table without standing on your toes
The spoilboard of mine is at about 42” height, which is perfect for me. Comfortable bed height really comes down to the height of the individual I think.
Your wall and window methods look good. I did the same sandwich with my enclosure and it’s been very effective.
I’ve been thinking that higher is better than lower as it can help focus in on the details of the setup. I’m 6’5” so standard heights of things really feel too low.
If there’s room to make the enclosure taller, do it. I had to crawl in one to do some work and I was glad it was 42" interior height (I’m 6’2"). The controller side is easily removable, and I’d like to make the other side really removable as well.
Best thing would be to just frame out a separate room you could walk into to move around the machine, but…
Ideally make the front door(s) removable and both side panels to allow you to do basic maintenance tasks without lifting the machine out of the enclosure or crawling around on it.
Your top height should be high enough to not bang your head when you lean in, that will probably leave enough height for the dust extraction hose too. Some LED panels in the top of the enclosure so the workspace is well lit are also nice to have.
Your doors should be 150mm to 200mm clear of the front of the machine to allow for the front overhang of the spindle plus a dust boot, or your machine will just bash the doors open when it comes to the front (or lose steps in Y which is worse).
As for table height, you want to be able to comfortably lean and reach 900mm back from the front of the enclosure to attach workpieces and deal with workholding.
If you’re planning on putting the extraction in the base of the cabinet, plan for how will it breathe and dump the heat.
been playing around with side panels that would be removable but unlike the back panel, I would envision the side panels as air gapped acrylic similar to the doors.
@LiamN If the doors open wide enough, I would think they would not need to be removable; I am going to use Drawer glides which would ultimately allow for removal, but I want to make sure Im not missing a consideration here.
One other thing that I’ve been thinking about… before I make a dedicated post about the enclosure design. When the Enclosure is a big box it feels a bit oppressive. I was thinking about adding a split on the face to reduce the feeling. Any thoughts on if its a bad idea?
Matt - Some thoughts/personal preferences after considering the design further… take from them what you will:
I’m not sure what you mean by oppressive… but the angled horizontal line of the window adds frame in an area that obstructs line of sight to the machine. You’re probably gonna want to observe your new robot companion doing it’s thing.
And while I know it’s common for companies to make machines with these styles of horizontal sliding doors, I personally wouldn’t dig having a large amount of frame right in the middle of the box obstructing view where the sliding doors meet. I’d personally rather have a full view of the machine.
But also, thinking about durability of the case, I would be very careful walking around the door wings while they’re open. Even heavy-duty side-mount drawer slides don’t like to be bent sideways, and if you accidentally bump into one of the doors while it’s fully extended, you could very easily bend the slides or blow it off the bearings. Even a small bend would make them annoying to open/close.
Plan to use heavier duty slides than anything off the shelf. The weight of the door with the drawer slides fully extended will cause it to rack due to gravity. The bottom slide will want to push in while the top slide will want to pull out. A sufficiently heavy top slide would be necessary to hang the full weight of the door to mitigate this twisting action.
I was thinking the same thing about durability. Drawer slides have 100 moving parts in them. They are packed with grease. In your design, the slides are towards the inside of your enclosure where all the dust is. Grease will get caked with sawdust. And In general, drawer are not “high traffic” items like hinges are.
Thinking back over all the vintage and antique items I’ve seen over the years, I have seen tons of old doors still working. I’ve got a chinese chest from the 1700s using hinges and they still work smoothly. I dont know that I’ve ever seen an old drawer that moved great. The sliding mechanisms just don’t age well or hold up over time.
If you were using linear bearings and they were sealed away from the sawdust, I think those would hold up over the years.
You might still need to oil them every decade or so
I agree re the hinges though, less grease to turn to grinding paste.
On the topic of the angled upper door, perhaps make this a separate part which opens upwards (like an old station wagon tailgate) and then let the lower part hinge down? That would allow full width windows too.
Good callout on the drawer glides. There are other alternatives for sure. I can also add a brush track to mitigate the dust. It doesn’t solve the axial stability concerns however.
I really would like to avoid hinging the doors. While they are highly durable, the environment the enclosure is going into lends itself to horizontal movement more than hinged doors. I do not have a ton of room in front of the enclosure.
In terms of the angled door and visibility. I can thermo form the acrylic to have an unobstructed view. In a prior life I worked in custom automotive design and did a lot of plastic bending.
I should also note; the dust collection for the enclosure is a Harvey GyroAir G700 when the CNC is in use will be dedicated to it so there should be plenty of CFM to clear the enclosure.
If you have the room, and don’t mind the wonky extension - you might use a heavy Hettich or Hawa pocket door track and hang the panels from a track that extends past the frame of the cabinet. This way the hardware is outside the box.
Another option would be a lift up panel that would go over the top of the cabinet - look at Blum Aventos for ideas. You’ll have to figure out the weight of the door to get the proper hardware but maybe this will inspire some other options?
When I get around to making my enclosure, I was leaning towards something that opened from the top like the Tesla gull wing doors. But from the front, not the side.
On my poor man’s enclosure at work, I made double bifold doors to minimize the issue of swinging a 30" door open. There are gaps I’ll have to use something like weather-stripping in.
