{"id":1047,"date":"2012-11-18T01:03:34","date_gmt":"2012-11-18T06:03:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pappp.net\/?p=1047"},"modified":"2012-11-18T16:59:06","modified_gmt":"2012-11-18T21:59:06","slug":"shapeoko-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/?p=1047","title":{"rendered":"Shapeoko: Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

My Shapeoko<\/a> kit arrived from Inventables<\/a> while I was away at SC. <\/p>\n

I’ve been trying to build myself a small CNC milling machine since 2009<\/a>, and contemplating it for longer than that. It became clear that my original design, however educational, was a dead end<\/a> sometime last year. I’d been idly watching the Shapeoko project for some time as it had similar aspirations to my design, and a couple months ago I was in a particularly mechanical mood when I saw that a batch had reached enough buyers to be produced, so I bought in for a mechanical kit to mount my existing electronics on. <\/p>\n

The Shapeoko community<\/a> is really excellent, and the kit was designed to be flexible, so I’m starting off with some suggested modifications – I’m using NEMA23 motors instead of the usual NEMA17 on the X and Y axis, because I already had some nice Lin Engineering 130 oz-in NEMA23 motors and the frame can fit them. I’m configuring for dual Y motors<\/a>, which give more even force across the Y axis, and routing my belts on the outside of the frame<\/a>, since I needed to buy different hardware for the NEMA23 motors anyway and this particular modification is widely recommended. <\/p>\n

There is a gallery to document my first round of assembly below the fold (captions don’t display properly in the RSS feed).
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