ShopBot Tools ShopBot Desktop: CNC Machine Walkthrough Video
I’ve always wanted to make a video showcasing how totally cool ShopBot Tool’s ShopBot Desktop really is while at the same time, make something for people who have no background behind CNC table routing to watch to get comfortable with this amazing technology.
It took me 43 minutes to dive through pretty much every aspect of the machine including cutting a project and putting a new sacrificial board in place.
If you are interested in getting into CNC table routing, please watch this entire video… then you know what to ask (if you are buying a machine) and the common issues you’ll be dealing with day to day.
I will be making more videos outlining specific aspects that I flew through in this video later like designing and pathing but that will be for another day. As always, you can find tested and proven CNC table router designs here on CNCKing.com with a video of me showing each design being cut and assembled!
You can also find this video under the CNC Table Routing menu on CNCKing.com along with some related blog postings.
ShopBot Tools ShopBot Desktop: CNC Machine Walkthrough Video Transcript
Borrowing a quote from ShopBot Tools founder Ted Hall, “CNC Machines are amazing but they aren’t magic.” My job is to make them fun! Today we are going to review one of his machines, the ShopBot Desktop.
(intro)
The best analogy that I’ve been able to come-up with to explain the differences between a table router and a laser cutter is that a table router is like a manual car, you’re a lot more involved with the process – you have hold downs to deal with, bit sizes and different settings like RPM (rounds per minute) and so forth.
This machine take a little bit of time to get use to but once you do, it’s a lot of fun just like a manual car! You go back to automatic and feel like you’re missing something. What we are going to do with this video is I’m going to explain the machine to you first then after that we are going to cut something as I know you don’t just want to look at me – you want to see something being made.
I removed the enclosure so you can more clearly see the industrial spindle that I have on my ShopBot Desktop. This spindle is capable of moving up to 12K RPMs and it’s 1hp. Here is the chuck and as you can see, there is no bit so what we are going to do now is install a bit on the machine.
A lesson I learned rather quickly after getting my ShopBot Desktop is that you can never have too many bits. What I do is buy them from Amazon for roughly 10$US each as here in Australia the same bit costs 30$US each. I get a few hundred dollars worth and get them shipped to me here.
What I use is straight, double-flute bits. 1/8th inch x 3/8ths inch and they work fantastic for the plywood that I use for all my prototyping. The advantage I have is that I always cut the same thickness of board and everything is the same so my set-up is very simple – I just need one kind of bit and a lot of them!
As for bits, they can last up to two weeks or 3-4 can break in one shot. There is no way to predict it so just have more so that when you need them, you have them. I took the chuck out and here you’ll see a thin line so you just line it up to that little line and spin it in manually so that it’s finger tight. Then you use the tools provided by ShopBot Tools and you give it a quick whirl. Tighten it a little and you’re done! You have a fresh bit and it’s the same process with a broken bit – no big deal, very easy to do.
(break ~ 3 minute mark)
Now that we have a bit installed on the machine, let’s take a look at the gantry system itself. Here we have the stepper motor for the z-axis (up and down), this (rod) spins in place moving the spindle up and down.
Here we have the x-axis stepper motor, left and right and underneath a y-axis stepper motor for front and back movement.
What’s really important about this machine that I want you to focus on is the construction. This is all extruded aluminum and solid steel. This is very important because when you are cutting materials, it’s putting a lot of pressure on the entire frame itself. If you make something out of very cheap material, what will happen is the machine starts bending because of all the forces involved and can actually break. This machine is incredibly rigid – it will not bend, fold or break no matter what you do with it.
Here we have our sacrificial board, this is very important because you don’t want to be engraving into the bed of your machine or the aluminum deck.
Taking a look at the side of the machine, here we have the power switch that controls the spindle. I just use the default settings for everything so I never play with this. If you want you can incrementally increase or decrease the RPMs which you can also do in the software.
Here you see a side profile of the extruded aluminum, this deck is incredibly strong and will not bend no matter how much pressure you put on it. It’s what I use to hold down the sacrificial MDF board.
Here is the limiting switch for the x-axis that prevents the spindle from continually hitting the side and going on forever. This is the limiting switch for the y-axis so it doesn’t keep going forward forever. Notice the very strong rails, even if this fills-up with debris, it still doesn’t prevent the machine from moving. It just shows you how strong this CNC table router really is!
The most important part of this machine this, it helps to control the z-axis so that it’s level at zero. Another important part of this machine is the emergency on-off switch. This is very important because the last thing you want to do is screwing around with your head cut off because you can’t figure out how to turn the machine off if something happens – this is very important and will be your friend when ever you break a bit.
(put on safety cage)
After many months at sea and storage, lets see if this thing works! I hear something revving-up so that means it’s alive and we are in action!
Now that I have the ShopBot Desktop running and plugged into the laptop, lets see if I can get it to move. So it found the ShopBot which is great.
(machine moves)
One of the first things I like to do is set-up the z-axis, once that’s controlled, it’s very easy to control the x and y axis without breaking a bit over the blocks.
This is why it’s important to be able to open this up, lay the aluminum plate right under the bit and it will drop zeroing the z-axis.
(z-axis zeroed)
What I’m going to do now is bring the z-axis up a bit so it doesn’t hit my boards then I’ll tell it to figure-out the home using x-y axis proximity switches.
Now we have x, y and z axis all figured-out. What I like to do next is warm-up the spindle, it hasn’t spun for almost a year so I’ll run the process twice to make sure everything is nicely lubed.
When I was in Canada originally cutting these projects in the garage, it usually got below zero so I’d warm-up the spindle twice to make sure everything was nice and warm. Again this spindle hasn’t run for almost a year so I’ll run the spindle warm-up routine one more time to make sure everything is perfect.
(break ~ 9:40 minute mark)
Just to review, we have the z-axis zeroed, x and y zeroed and now we have the spindle nice and warm. I ran it a third time to make sure everything was alright.
The first thing we are going to do – I have the files here that I grabbed from CNCKing.com – is load-up the parts starting with the drill holes. What you want to do is have the ShopBot Desktop drill the holes out so you don’t go over them with the bit afterwards.
(start drill holes)
As you can hear, it’s incredibly quiet. Now I’ll know exactly where to put the screws so my path isn’t over them. I tend to put a lot more screws than I need to because I’ve had stuff move around on me previously. Put too many instead of not enough.
(drill sequence done)
What I’m going to do now is move the arm out of the way so it’s easy for me to screw all this stuff in. Let’s screw away!
These screws are a little larger than I’d like but they’ll do the job. Notice the head is massive – I didn’t notice that until afterwards but I give myself enough room so that’s not an issue.
This is why drilling the holes with the ShopBot Desktop is really nice as I can’t see the pattern I’ll be cutting as I can on the computer so being able to set them up previously before doing the job really helps.
Sometimes I miss a screw spot or two but I think I’m OK this time around. Back to the computer! Something you don’t want to do here is load-up the drill file again as you’ll run over the screws with your bit breaking it. Now we’ll do the pockets which don’t go all the way into your material, just half way.
Normally I’d have the vacuum running but in this case, I want to have everything running real time so I can talk over it.
(cutting out pockets)
The reason why you want to do pockets is so you can put the guides through the wheels without seeing them through the other end. The guides will be hidden. In this case there are 4 wheels so 4 pockets need to be done.
I forgot I had pockets in the body as well so it goes to 8 pockets.
Now that we have the pockets done let’s check them out and they look great! I just wanted them 3 mm into the material as I have 6mm plywood here.
The next thing we’ll do are the inside parts, you want to do the inside parts after the pockets as you aren’t actually cutting the parts out. If you cut out the outside pieces first then the inside parts, they’ll move around but if you do the inside first, there isn’t anything to move around. Each time you cut the board, you introduce a new level of play and things will start moving around.
(cutting inside parts)
Now it’s cutting all the holes, this is normally when it gets extremely dusty. You can hear the machine going through the material twice, that’s because I have two passes.
What I’ve done is increase the spindle speed a little bit so it cuts faster so you don’t have the roughness anymore.
(ShopBot Desktop done cutting inside parts)
And we are done, let’s look at it a little closer. Some of these inside parts should be a little loose so we’ll take it out with our hands.
Now let’s do the outside parts!
(ShopBot Desktop is vacuumed and cutting starts)
You’ll notice the spindle moving up and down a little bit while it’s cutting, the reason for that is because it’s making tabs. Notice the smooth motion, no jerking around!
The ShopBot Desktop is doing two passes, the first one is 3.2mm and the second is another 3.2mm, this means it will go clear through the 6mm board which makes assembly easy as the parts just pop-out. The reason for the tabs is so the pieces don’t come out while they are being cut as it can screw things up a bit.
As you can see, so far we have lots of saw dust, this is why the vacuum is very nice. I’m not being very nice to the bit right now but just to show you everything I go through each time I cut a project with the ShopBot Desktop.
(ShopBot Desktop done cutting outside parts)
How’s that for precision? You have all the screws and we went around all of them. What we are going to do now is move the gantry out of the way and so we can remove the board.
(unscrewing screws)
I have some projects with up to 12 boards which is why I speed-up my videos as it’s like watching paint dry.
(break ~ 29 minute mark)
Its now been one day since you saw the video of me cutting this – it cut great but not all the way through. I’ve been cutting so many models on this sacrificial board that the center area is now hallow, so the board goes down when screwed into place – this is still the original one by Bill Young (ShopBot Genius). I’m always cutting around the inside but not around, resurfacing the table is the normal solution but I have too many screw holes so its time I replace it completely.
I just finished cutting a sheet of MDF as this board is finished so we’ll replace it now.
(unscrewing anchors on t-slots)
The t-slots are wonderful because you have amazing hold down and because its all extruded alumium, everything is completely flat. I’ll just remove a few of these as I want to keep the board there. Originally I was going to use a drill press but as we have the ShopBot Desktop, I made the files for it and its best to just use that to drill the new holes in the MDF.
I’ll screw the MDF right onto it and redo the z-axis zeroing and we’ll be all set.
This one is going to be slightly different than what I have here. What I want to do is have the screw holes along the side instead of some in the middle, there may be some bowing but I’ll just replace the board as resurfacing doesn’t solve the problem with the screw holes which makes hold down useless.
As all the hold down will be along the edges, best place to hold the board in temporarily is in the front where none exist. I can then drill the holes in with the ShopBot Desktop.
This is 16mm and the other board is 20mm, so what I did is set-up the job software so that the bit will go all the way through the first board and into the second to make sure it goes all the way in. What I’m doing here is manually moving the spindle because I want the bit to be on the corner over here.
(software)
Now I set zero x and y as the z is perfect already. This software is partworks which is what you use to make the tool paths. These boxes represent the t-slots which is where I want the hold down screws to intersect with. I have to sets of circles here, one is the head, the other the thread as they are a different diameter. I’ve already saved these things as ShopBot files, a really nice feature of this software is you can do previews.
(preview)
Now I can see exactly what the ShopBot is doing step by step.
(drilling holes)
(break ~ 35:40 minute mark)
If you are very observant, you’ll notice the board already had massive circles before I did the cutting. The reason is that Jon, the CNC King, got radius mixed-up with diameter. I cut all these things first with a radius of 14mm when I really wanted them to be a diameter of 14mm. Not a big deal, it’s scrap wood anyways but if I can screw-up and NASA can screw-up, so can you!
(fishing-out the holes)
What I’ll do is give it a quick vacuum. What I notice here is just the tip of the screws was digging into my aluminum, its not nice but its easily replaced. This is why the sacrificial board is very important as otherwise, I’d have to replace the entire thing.
This is why I went right along the edge so its nice and easy to align things. All I do is tighten them in and we’re in business. I’m leaving a lot more room here as in the future I’d like to use hold down clamps. Now that I have everything nice and tight, I’m going to put this thing in.
Because my board is thinner, I’m using different screws so I don’t go into my aluminum deck. It doesn’t support any weight. Let’s put in a sample board – and we are done!
This locks it into place until I screw-in the real hold down. Just needs to hold long enough for the ShopBot to screw the drill holes in for me.
(break ~ 42:05 minute mark)
I hope you really enjoyed the video, it’s a lot longer than I thought it would be but I wanted to show every aspect of the ShopBot Desktop. This is very much an industrial machine. It cuts through anything, steel, wood, glass and even vinyl. Vinyl isn’t something you can cut or engrave with a laser as it releases chlorine gas which is bad for the machine and yourself.
This thing weights about 45 kilograms or 100 pounds, its not that heavy. You can carry it around and I’ve done that myself, its not much fun but doable. As for work area, give yourself a few meters to be able to move material around.
What else can you do with this? Well, you can put a 3D digitizing pen on it allowing you to trace materials, diamond drag or drag knife or a rotary index so it ends-up being a neat little lathe.
I hope you enjoyed the video, if you want to contact them about this machine, feel free to do so at shopbottools.com and I look forward to seeing you in the next video.