When my Shapeoko XXL arrived on my doorstep I was both excited and anxious. Now that it had arrived it was time to assemble it. The first thing you notice when you begin opening the large box your machine is in is that its filled with smaller boxes which are clearly labeled. There is no confusion as to what is in each box. Here is a link to my Instagram showing the boxes lined up. Once the boxes were laid out, I went to work assembling the base and each axis. The instructions provided by Carbide 3d are impeccable. Each Step has detailed instructions, Pro Tips, and things to be cautious about. You can take a look at the instructions here.
Assembly for me took around 4 hours total, which was mainly because I was taking my time, learning the machine, the parts, really diving into the directions so I knew what I was working with. This came in handy in the next phase of assembly. I will refer to this as the period of time where I was able to test out the Carbide Support teams ability to help me troubleshoot some electrical problems the machine was having. Out of the box, it was determined that I received a bad power supply, which Carbide is aware of and is quickly working to rectify a bad shipment of power supply’s they received from a vendor. In my case, it ended up damaging the control board which the Carbide Support team of Meg and Will were able to identify simply from my videos and pictures of my machine.
Once the power supply and controller where replaced the machine struggled to find home. For those not familiar with this process, consider the Claw machine at your local Game Room, each time you have finished trying to grab the prize, it returns to the starting location. The culprit was simple, the X and Z axis motors had been accidently packaged wrong. Jorge at Support quickly identified the symptoms and gave me an easy fix to this, swapping the X and Z wires in the controller.
Its always been my opinion that in every product there will be things to work through. Although eager to get cutting and some frustrations grew as I worked through the trouble shooting, I was impressed by the Carbide Support teams ability to diagnose and fix my assembly problems. I should note that each time Carbide3d identified a faulty part they overnighted me the parts to rectify my concern.
In closing, the assembly process is pretty fool proof. Carbide3d pre-assembles the motors, has the wiring harnesses ready click into place, and as stated everything is labeled clearly. Having watched others struggle with CNC machines built by other companies I can say that I did not feel I needed an engineering degree to get my cutter up and moving. I must note that this machine was sent out to me by Carbide3d with the opportunity to review and use this machine.
Here is a link directly to the Shapeoko XXL for your to check out the machine I have. 