Assembly

[rwill40158@aol.com]

Iv'e just assembled my new shopbot and I'm very impressed so far. One thing I noticed though is the mounting of the Z axis motor on its frame. It seems to be held on with two cable ties. One of them was broken. Does anyone have a better way of mounting it or is this method working OK?

[pauln@ncc4u.com]

Roger:
My PR32 is about 1 year old now, and it came with the cable ties, and has been running just fine.
Not sure if other bott'ers have changed or not.

Let me know if I can help in any way!

Good Luck & have FUN!

Paul

[Jay Meadors]

Large diameter pipe clamps have been working fine for me.

[Olivier@UntoThisLast.co.uk]

Any table plans available ?

I am considering buying a shopbot and I wonder
whether to buy the steel table (I am in the UK and
the shipping cost make it quite dear).
Is there any plans for a table which would
garantee
a rigid surface ?

Thank you for your answer.
I find the athmosphere on this forum great, if I
go for buying a shopbot, this would be the main
reason.
Olivier

[bruce_clark]

Olivier,

I am sure that ShopBot will send you a fax or
at least an email. If nothing else, I can send
you a picture (via email) of my steel table.

All I can say, is that the steel tables makes a
world of difference in the rigidity of the ShopBot
machine. If you can afford it, it is worth every
penny/pence.

Even if you do not buy SB's table, get the machine
and got to a local welder and have one made. If
you are in the Nottingham area, I have some I can
recommend (and if he is too busy, I am sure that
he can recommend someone else).

Bruce Clark
bwclark@centurytel.net (mailto:bwclark@centurytel.net)

[pauln@ncc4u.com]

Olivier & Bruce,

If you will go to the SB 'ftp' site, there is a couple files on the wooden and steel tables.

The one I downloaded was: "steeltable.zip"
It has several very very detail drawings of the
best table for your SB.

Paul Nielsen

[ddchap@ix.netcom.com]

I'm happy with the wood table I built from framing lumber, using a modified plan which provides for storage of 4x8 material below. I have a complete woodworking shop and have built lots of furniture and cabinets, so I have a lot of experience getting things square and plumb. The biggest factors are picking the best lumber you can find, measuring twice, using a power miter saw to make all cuts, and using lots of screws and carriage bolts to hold it all together. I used the ShopBot plane program to plane the table top support 2x4's and then put on a sheet of 3/4" MDF secured with countersunk screws. I even added heavy duty (about 270lb load capacity each) casters. Even being moved around, it remains true within 1/32 to 1/16 inch over 8ft, which may be unacceptable for machine shop standards, but is just fine for most woodworking needs. I continue to be amazed how accurate my ShopBot is, considering the framing-lumber table and that almost all of its other parts are adapted off-the-shelf items which were never intended to be used the way we are using them. I use mine mainly to do signs, and still stare in wonder as this hodge-podge of parts precisely routs letters and graphics into the substrate.

[owp@mindspring.com]

Olivier
I am using a wood table that I built from shopbot plans with a few modifications. I used 4x4 lumber for the legs instead of the 2x and used LVL for the main frame. I have added 2 shelves for storage of 4x8 sheet goods. We manufacture circle top and elliptical moldings and custom millwork. our shopbot is running 3-4 days a week machining mostly 3/4" thick MDF and Plywood. The table is quite sturdy and I have had no problems with the table remaining square. The shopbot has worked flawless and was a great investment.

[BoscoToys@thebest.net]

Olivier,
My wooden table worked good with exception of the legs. Now with concrete legs There is very little shaking. I can run the shopbot at 4 inches/second and it runs smoother now then it did with the bot running at 1"/sec with the old legs.

[Olivier@UntoThisLast.co.uk]

Thank your all for your answers.
I am definitively convinced to buy a shopbot
because of this forum.
I Will order is this week.
According to your experiences it understand that
is weight, more than the material that make the
table sturdy. Do you think I am right ?
Another question :
Are your tables bolted to the floor ? Is it a good
way to reduce vibrations ?
David, I am amazed by the speed you are writing
about. What are you cutting at 4" a second ?
To decide whether the shopbot would be profitable
for me I based my calculations on a conservative
1" a second (Typically cutting 12 mm ie 1/2" of
birch ply. Can I expect to go faster?)
I put a typical file and the cutting time
calculation on my web site at this adress

http://www.UntoThisLast.co.uk/shopbot.htm (http://www.UntoThisLast.co.uk/shopbot.htm)
If anybody could comment on my calculation it
would be useful.
I'll order my shopbot anyway.
Thank you everybod

[SaintjohnBosco@yahoo.com]

Olivier, I'm not really cutting that fast I was just comparing the vibration doing air cuts. The fastest I've been able to do reliable engravings has been 2 inches/second. Through cutting is more like .5 to .75 "/sec. I have switchs at the end of my x and y axis' which I use to rezero periodically, this lets me go a little faster.

[SaintjohnBosco@yahoo.com]

I was cutting 3/4 inch Ash at that speed, you could probably get 1 ips with your applicaton.

[jimanddi@jwood99.fsnet.co.uk]

Olivier,
Im just inquireing to see if you have got your shop bot yet and did you have any problems with import duty with bringing it in to the UK?

[olivier]

Hello Jim,

Yes, I did received my shopbot via DHL. No problem
at all with import duty : DHL paid the VAT (17,5%)
and the custom (1,7%) when the packages entered
the UK, and they send me a bill two weeks later.

I have been experimenting with my shopbot for
Three weeks now, and I have some very interesting
results already.
Will post a sum up of the impressions of a new
shopboter on the forum soon

[pabalu]

Hi everyone or anyone. I just received my shopbot. Assembly went fine and its very square and level, however, I'm not getting any lights on my control box. Yes, I've got it plugged in. You can imagine, I hope, How anxious I am to give this baby and trial run. I checked my trouble shooting info and honestly I don't understand why It won't turn on. Is there anything inside the control box that I might have overlooked. Simply said, I followed the instructions to the letter. Thank you's go out to you who respond to my inquiry. Boyd Gadberry

[seaside]

Boyd,

I don't believe that the lights do anything in the ShopBot box; they're used in a computer to show if the hard drive is working and such. You might try looking in the box and see if the wires to the lights are actually hooked up to anything.

Are you sure the box isn't really turned on? I'm not sure about the new control boxes with the built-in power supplies, but one way to check if the box was powered up with the older boxes was to see if the cooling fan in the back was working. If there isn't a cooling fan, you might listen to see if the power supply is humming. You could also try starting the ShopBot software and seeing if it connects to the box.

One more possibility. My control box has a switch that has to be pushed in REALLY far to turn on fully. If you don't push it in far enough, the lights and fan come on briefly, but go right back off when you release the switch. It's fooled me more than once!

Hope this helps,

Bill

[gdorrington@iafrica.com]

Do you guys have a public holiday today? No reply from Shopbot phone number 680 4800.

[seaside]

Gerald,

I just got an email from Donna at ShopBot saying that their phone lines are down, and that the phone company is working to get them back on line. Try back in a little bit.

Bill

seaside@esva.net (mailto:seaside@esva.net)

[john@pcjet.com]

If their phone lines are down how did they connect to send email?

[gdorrington@iafrica.com]

Thanks Bill. South Africa to USA is a mighty long phone line - glad to hear that our end is OK! Due to time zone difference (6hours), went off to dinner date and now to bed (10:57pm). Will try next week.

[pauln@ncc4u.com]

Just some thoughts....

What is your power, 115 or 230 ??

Do you have an external power supply, and is the voltage set right?

If you have an external power supply, can you verify that connections and power output ?

Does the PC case power supply fan run ?

Just some ideas !!!

Paul

[Gerald & Sean Dorrington]

My son and I have just assembled our PRT96 here in Cape Town (South Africa). Everything went okay, except we seem to have a Southern Hemisphere problem - everything is upside-down! When we enter positive values for x,y,z the tool goes left, towards and down (viewed from front).

The test ShopBot logo cuts the jog steps into the wood and one can see the letters are somewhere above the wood!

Also terrible to work in inches again (25 years after they were banned here) and desperately checking manuals on how to go to mm.

Any ideas on what we did wrong?

[djhazeleger@mindspring.com]

To reverse direction of a motor you need to reverse green and black wires in one of it's connectors, see page 71 of assembly manual. To change to metric use the command VD,,1 this is explained on page 31 of the user's guide. Be sure to look this us up as it explains more in detail.

Dirk

[gdorrington@iafrica.com]

Some new PRT Shopbots may have had a problem with wiring (from Ted Hall). He also tells me to reverse all four motors. I first thought that there is a "global" setting where we may have typed a "-1" by mistake. Problem definitely hardware and not software.

Thanks for feedback
Gerald and Sean

[Ted Hall, ShopBot]

Hi Gerald,

Yes, you can change direction in the software, too. But we discovered a while ago, that it is best if we all start off with the same wiring and system settings. So just reverse those black and green wires and you will be all set.