I’ve ordered XL shapeoko. Should be here next week. Want to purchase an inexpensive tablet or laptop to use in the workshop but I can’t find any info on minimum requirements in terms of processor and ram. I envision using create on my desktop in my house and then copy gcode file to tablet/laptop and use that in the shop. However I would think I would not only use motion on tablet/laptop but also create if I needed to tweak the design. I can get a 200 device with 4gb of ram and a atom or celeron processor but not sure that would have enough horsepower? Any advice is appreciated…
Our system requirements are listed at:
In the past I’ve used very modest tablets (I prefer them), and I still use an Atom tablet (Toshiba Encore 2 Write 10) to control my machines. Most of the folks who are working with tablets set them up to only run the bare necessities (usually CM and DropBox) which seems to help with performance.
I find an active stylus helps with navigating dialog boxes at least, and a numeric keypad makes a useful pendant, see:
I ran carbide motion on an atom box for a long time (now I run a different sender…same atom box). There’s VERY little required for a sender. If it’ll run windows in a reasonably acceptable way, it’ll run CM without too much trouble. The issue will be with design software, and that’s a different topic.
I do pretty much exactly as you describe, I design elsewhere, then send the gcode to the garage machine and send it from there to the machine.
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If you don’t me asking - what sender are you using now and why did you change??
thx
So you don’t find a need to run the carbide create in the shop then - which makes sense I think. I’ll get a better idea of work flow when I actually get my machine 
Thanks for the info.
I will occasionally run Carbide Create to check some aspect of the file setup or if need be to make a file for only cutting a final pass.
Thx for the info. Much appreciated !
I use UGS (Universal GCode Sender : https://winder.github.io/ugs_website/) - they really need to update the screenshots, it doesn’t so much look like that any more. Reliable, I like the “job” plugins that let me run multiple different files in sequence, the jog controls are big enough to use on a touch screen, works with really big files, and let me use some non-standard sizes for Z axis with a previous Z axis that wouldn’t work with CM. My understanding is that CM now supports the HDZ, and I switched to HDZ, so that’s not much of an issue any more.
received my machine but not had a chance to put it together and I am going out of town this week on business so I don’t get to even start putting it together until next week! that being said - do you like the HDZ and what was your primary rationale for upgrading??
I had already upgraded to one of the other alternative Z axis with a ballscrew, and was always having trouble with that one that was causing a lot of chatter (it used an anti-backlash design that is ok on a 3d printer, not on a mill). It was “designed for the shapeoko 3” but had to be modified to fit. I had moved away from the original Z because I was trying to improve surface finish on some aluminum parts, and it seemed to be an overall stiffer design. It was stiffer, but caused all sorts of other problems. So I replaced that one with the HDZ.
The HDZ is fantastic, it’s really well built, “just works” and has a lot of nice features, like the quick-adjust tramming. It’s really stiff, and much nicer than the one I had. I’m very happy with it.
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