Nope, the hole patterns are different because we had to make this from sheet stock to keep the cost down. We’ll see what we can do moving forward.
Yep, close to the HDZ in performance but more in the middle for price.
Same sized rails but the ballscrew would be stiffer than an anti-backlash nut. (This is our own anti-backlash nut and it’s a lot beefier than the existing alternatives for a TR8x8 thread) That said, for most users it’s not a big difference in practice.
Yep. Can’t have it running off the end of the rails.
Z travel is close to the stock belt Z.
The spindle mount allows easier tram adjustment but it’s not the same at the EZ Tram on the HDZ.
We’re throwing together a blog post for next week to outline our Shapeoko development process moving forward but the short answer is that we’re moving toward rapid incremental improvement rather than a fixed Shapeoko V4, V5, V6. We think it’s better for customers and it better suits our abilities.
For what it’s worth, we did design Shapeoko 4 about 18 months ago but it was too expensive for us to be comfortable with it. Since then, we’ve worked really hard to cut costs so we can afford to upgrade the machines without massive price increases. A current Shapeoko with the Z-Plus and a BitSetter is a better version of what we had planned for Shapeoko 4.