Shopbot Assembly Photos

The posts and pictures on the forum were very helpful for our Shopbot assembly. For what it is worth, here are some pictures of how our Shopbot went together. Hopefully, they'll be of some help to others putting their machines together.

Here's where it all started - the empty space in our workshop.


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The starting point was assembly of the frame. Here's the legs and the sides coming together.


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Here are all of the cross members assembled, and the leveling and installation of the rails. While it helped that we stared out with a level floor, leveling the frame wasn't too difficult following the instructions in the manual.


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Here's the installation of the XY and Z cars on the rails.


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Our machine came with the plexiglass cable guide, but following the lead of others on the forum, we used cable carriers. These were purchased from McMaster Carr. (Thanks to Gary Campbell for model number information he posted on the forum). The upper cable carrier was mounted with some pretty simple home-made aluminum brackets. The x-axis lower cable carrier is also mounted to aluminum brackets, but also has a plexiglass plate for support.


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Here's the wiring of the cable carriers.


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We mounted our control box and VFD to the wall next to the Shopbot. This was pretty simple (except that the mount locations were not optimized for normal stud spacing). Based on other forum posts about heat, our mounting concept (white painted 2x4's) left plenty of airspace behind the boxes. We were originally a little worried about having enough wire to run from the machine to the boxes, but everything worked out OK.


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Here's how the machine looked with all of the wire run through the cable carriers.


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Here's the external view of the wiring to the boxes. The gray plastic box under the control box is where we coiled all of the excess wire.


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Here's a picture of the interior of the control box completely wired with the power feeds and control lines, and a photo of the wires coming out of the control box.


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Now, this is where we departed from the norm -- we are using an Apple i-Mac to run the shopbot. Here's the mounting of the i-Mac on the wall. It's an elegant solution -- the i-Mac has a big screen and the computer all in one package -- plus an industrial quality wireless keyboard. This is a 24" 2.8GHz model. It easily mounts to the wall using an Apple VGA mount kit and a VGA wall mount.


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With the machine wired, the next step was the vacuum table. Here is the first layer of the table getting ready to be bolted down. This is a sheet 3/4 inch 5x9 MDF. While we would have rather not used MDF, this was the best solution we could find for our 96x60 machine. (Our workshop is pretty dry, so hopefully it won't turn into "rice krispies" as Bill Palumbo said at recent Camp Shopbots).


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Here's the plenum layer being glued on. We attempt anything fancy for this process -- just used a lot of clamps and weights to hold the material down. This is another sheet of 3/4 inch 5x9 MDF.


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Here's the first time the machine cut anything -- the plenum board. This is a photo of the cutting just starting.


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With that, we breathed a sigh of relief that the i-Mac would really run the Shopbot. After reading forum posts about this and not getting enthusiasm for Apple from Shopbot training class, we were a little nervous that this would work. Here's proof that it does -- Shopbot control software running on the Mac. We're using Parallels software to run the PC files. This solution really works well for us. We've got several Mac's networked in our home and office. When we finish a design file in the office, we are easily able to move the design file to the workshop Mac on the network. Plus we've discovered some other interesting features using one of the new dual-core processor Macs. For example, i-Macs have a built in camera that shows real time pictures in a video conference over the network or over the web. Because we are able to run Shopbot control software and Mac programs simultaneously, we can point the camera at the Shopbot and watch/hear the Shopbot cutting files. Overall, the Mac works great. The screen is big and visible, and it has a great wireless keyboard and wireless mouse that make it really convenient to run the machine.


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Here's what the plenum looked like after it was cut. Although we really liked some of the more elegant plenum ideas on the forum, we decided to keep it simple on version 1. We set up 7 zones. Five zones were set up to hold down normal 4x8 sheet goods. The other two zones -- which use the extra foot of the 96x60 machine are contemplating that we'll use the machines for board lumber. The 4x8 area was broken into 5 zones to create one 2x2 zone in front where we could run smaller pieces.


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To seal the plenum, we sprayed it with 5 coats of polyurethane floor finish. Here's the machine taped off for spraying and the final finish.


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We tried to stay simple with our vacuum piping design. One Fein vac runs the front of the table and one runs the back of the table with an ability to connect both Fein vacs together to run specific zone. We mounted the piping on an aluminum angle on the side of the machine -- which kept the front of the machine very clean and made runs to the table simple.


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Here's how the piping looks under the table.


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The vacuum piping connected to the plenum table mostly by a friction fit. With the Shopbot precision cut holes and a lot of polyurethane, plastic piping fit very tightly in the plenum holes. We also sealed around the bottoms with silicon. Here's how the plastic piping looks coming through the plenum table.


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Next was installing the spoilboard and surfacing both sides. For the spoilboard we used two pieces of lightweight MDF -- with a seam that matched our plenum design. The first attempt at surfacing the spoilboard was a disaster -- we tried to do it with no clamps and just vacuum. Unfortunately, as we cut the skin off of the first side, the MDF sheet started releasing its internal stresses and started curling. We successfully turned that sheet into mostly sawdust. For our next attempt we used clamps at the corners. That solved the problem. Plus it also taught us about safe Z clearance heights when we cut through our first clamp. Here's a picture of the spoilboard being surfaced with the surfacing bit.


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This worked well -- our resulting surface was flat and smooth on both sides. The edges of the table including the spoilboard were sealed with multiple coats of polyurethane and gray epoxy paint prior to surfacing the final side. The spoilboard was glued down with a lot of silicon sealer/adhesive. We used the vacuum to hold down the spoilboard -- using some wax paper on top of the spoilboard to create enough vacuum.

Here's the final product.


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We made one last modification -- to the Fein vacs. We experienced vacuum leaks connecting hoses to the orange Fein bodies. So, using an idea from the forum, as our first Shopbot project, we built custom bases for the Fein heads. Here are the new Fein bases being cut out on the machine from one sheet of MDF:


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Here's the base of the assembled box -- sprayed with multiple coats of polyurethane and then the interior coated with epoxy paint.


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The top of the box was built to fit up inside the Fein head and provide a solid seal.


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This is the completed Fein stand -- a photo of the stand and a photo with the Fein head installed.


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Here are the Feins attached to the vacuum piping.


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That's it. Here are overall photos of the final machine installation.


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Thanks again for all the forum users who posted information that helped us get our machine started.

Alison...
Nice neat clean job. Good pictures, too. Now that you have ruined a sheet of material, cut a clamp, all you have to do is break a few bits and you are initiated!!
Gary

WOW! That's one heck of a first post! Well done.

Alison,
GREAT pictures!!!, Great Info!!!, and GREAT Posting !!! Thanks for putting the time in to assemble all of that.....Hope we can either reference the posting, or just transfer the entire posting to the WIKI(?)

Bill: Feel free to use the pictures and information any way you feel would be of value.

very impressive, thanks for taking the time to post all of that...where did you find the plans for plenum

Outstanding set up of your machine. BTW you have email.

Fantastic job Allison. & welcome to the community. If Gary Campbell tells you "Good job" then you can definitely be proud of your work. I'm designing on a Mac on Parallels, it seems to run Windows better than Windows, as Gene Buckle says, "Linux for servers, Macs for design, and Windows for Solitaire" Again great work, now I'll copy your design for the vac table if you dont mind - Neville

Nice Setup Alison. Would love to see pics of the rest of your shop. It looks very clean, tidy and impressive.
Glen

Alison,
Great pictures. Thanks for taking the time to share them with us. I am scheduled to received my Bot in April and will be referring back to these pictures often as a reference and as an 'excitement generator' until mine Bot arrives.

I agree with Glen. Your shop looks great.

Scott

It's way tooooo clean in there
I wouldn't dare stick my 24" imac in the same room as my bot, it stays at home where I only spill a soda on the keyboard every other week.

Looks good!! One question though. Do you have another e-stop button on the bot, it comes in handy when you're bent over looking to see if something is about to go catastrophically wrong, and it does...

Gabe
www.socalteardrops.com

A work of art!

I really like the Fein Boxes too :-)

gonna use that thing or just look at it (G)

I think she should rope off that area and offer tours.

Can't wait to see the projects, Alison!!

Alison,

I don't think my shop was that clean before i moved into or anytime since. If i came for a tour i would remove my shoes so i wouldn't track in dirt.

Great job, with that much care and attention to setting up I'm sure you will do very well in your projects.

Sean

Carving Artists: We designed the plenum based on looking at other posts on the forum and thinking about how we wanted to use the machine. It was super easy to design and implement in Partworks. I just drew out the grid -- and then set up the tool path to run a 1/4 inch bit on the lines of the grid before it cut out the holes for the vacuum piping.

Gabe: You might not be able to see it on the pictures, but the E-stop button is located on the wall near the computer. Between that and the spacebar on our wireless keyboard, so far we've been able to handle a several "panic" stops.

Although it looks clean, believe it or not, we actually are cutting files and generating saw dust. We've got a 3HP cyclone connected to the machine and it really sucks up most of the dust. Early on we also decided to epoxy paint our workshop's concrete floor. That makes it pretty easy to keep the area clean -- especially with the control and VFD boxes mounted to the wall and not much clutter under the machine. We're obviously just getting started -- we're not generating a huge volume of dust yet. But hopefully, the set up will continue to be easy to maintain.

Alison,

I have a ShopBot now with a bag dust collector and I am thinking about changing the dust collector over to a cyclone type. What brand and horse power did you install and is it working for you. I can only see one photo with your dust collector in it, looks like it my services other equipment, does it? The next question how did you connect the dust collector piping to the ShopBot? Does the over head arm swing or is it fixed and the flex pipe long enough to reach all corners of the table.

Thanks.

Your installation looks great.

Ron:

There are a lot of other posts on the forum about dust collection from people who have longer term experience with their set-up. You should check them out. Our installation is still pretty new -- it works great now, but we don't have any longer term perspective and few comparisons to other installations.

Having said that, here's some pictures of our dust collection set up.


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As you can see, we're using a 3HP Grizzly cyclone dust collector for the Shopbot and our other equipment. The ductwork is Norfab -- the hard duct pieces all fit together with clamps.

To make the connection to the machine, we ran hard ductwork on the ceiling to a point over the center of the machine, and then used a swivel connection. From there, it's 4" flex duct. Using some aluminum bar stock that we got from Home Depot, we fashioned a bracket that bolts to the front of the YZ car and loops over the back of the gantry. The flex duct was connected to the bracket with clamps and wire ties. We weren't sure if the simple aluminum bracket would be stiff enough, but so far it's worked fine -- and it's little extra flex seems to avoid any issue with the ductwork binding up the machine. The swivel and flex duct combination reaches all of the corners of the machine -- and the flex duct is held nicely up off of the table surface without any issue.

When we picked the cyclone, we made our final decision between the Grizzly and Oneida. We made our decision on price even though there are a lot of comments on the web about the Oneida being quieter. We probably could have gotten by with a little less horsepower, but based on the ductwork static pressure calculations, we opted for the 3HP to get a lot of margin for error. The quality and ease of assembly of the Grizzly cyclone seemed pretty good. (The Grizzly people, however, were extremely hard to deal when there was an issue with machine delivery).

The Norfab ductwork is a little expensive, but it is outstanding stuff. It was super easy to assemble and align -- plus it gave the luxury of being able to try some configurations and then change them around if they didn't look right. And we got super service from our Atlanta distributor -- Underwood Air Systems -- including turn-around of some factory custom made parts within a couple days.

So far, the dust collection system works great. It has plenty of suction power. We're getting very little sawdust left on the Shopbot table after cuts -- using the Shopbot's standard dust collection head. And it's a debate which is louder -- the dust collection system or the (supposedly quiet) Fein vacuums at full suction.

You should also check an earlier post by Gary Campbell about his dust collection hose set up -- he used a sliding mechanism over the machine. We had the opportunity to see it at the Camp Shopbot in his workshop and it was a very cool approach.

How long did it take from picture #1 to final product?

I am not yet the owner of a ShopBot, but I can tell you this, your post answered dozens of questions. Some of which I did not know to ask.

Your setup is really nice. . . first class . . .

Qne question that I do have pertains to the vacuum hold down system. I understand the how the plenum distributes the vacuum, but then everyone appears to attach a "spoil board" right on top of the plenum. How will the vacuum hold down the material, it is now isolated from the plenum.

I assume the plenum is MDF as well as the spoil board.

Thanks in advance,
Steve

Steve,
Vacuum pulls through the spoil board.
Light weight MDF is pores.
It needs to be fly cut on both sides first.
Then the vacuum pulls very well right through the spoil board.

Yes, Macs can. I run my bot, an Epilog laser and a few other un mac friendly things from Mac minis. The cheepy little Minis run XP in a way more stable fashion than our big fancy Dell tower ever did. It is all about the Bus speed...

My only suggestion is to boot from Boot Camp rather than Parallels for bigger projects. I mostly Boot directly from the XP when I am running machines. I have found Parallels to be buggy when you really push the CPU. However, the new iMac may have no problems.

Beautiful setup. Happy Bot-ing.

Is there a cutting file on the forum for the vac boxes? I really like the design

I am in the process of setting up my Shop Bot. I am wondering if you had any more pictures of how the wiring runs. I am wondering how much you paid for the extra wiring enclosure. Do you have pictures of how you mounted that?

Thank you,

Greg

I want to thank you for your post. I used it a bunch while putting my SB together. I was wondering if I could get a copy of the Fein box file you created.

Kent