Centroid Community CNC Support Forum

Here's a little winter project that I've been working on. It's nothing compared to the "Big Iron" a lot of others have converted, but none the less a fun project.

I came by a new unused 2016 ShopBot Desktop Max last fall that a friend had and was looking to sell. After attempting to find a buyer for him and coming up with no takers, I decided to buy it myself, with intentions of converting it to a Centroid Acorn system and giving it a new lease on life. Out with the old Gecko drives and the close to 20 year old software (which has gone through few changes in that time span) and in with the new parts. This includes, at the top of the list, an Acorn4 controller, 5 LeadShine EM542S open loop drives (to go with the Thompson Rotating Screw NEMA 23 motors), new proximity sensors (set up for auto square homing), crosshair laser, touch probe, and tool touch off (auto tool length measure for manual/auto tool changes). Future additions will be a rotary axis and an edge clamp jig. While "Super Max" might make one think that it would have an ATC, that's probably not going to happen. The "Super" part is the Acorn, CNC12 software, and all that it can be, as the updates just keep happening!

Anyway, this is just the first installment of this build thread. In the next one, I'll have some video of proof of life and other things. Next thing to build is a monitor/PC holder to go on a monitor arm.

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Looks like a quality unit. Interesting that the vfd is hanging off the side of the gantry.

SandboundChris wrote: ↑Sun Mar 30, 2025 12:33 pm Looks like a quality unit. Interesting that the vfd is hanging off the side of the gantry.

Yeah, it's pretty solid. It's got some quirks, but most are being addressed. The VFD is a small Delta S1 on this unit. ShopBot has never had a good solution for controlling the RPM on these by controller and file, so the potentiometer on the front of the VFD has always been used for controlling the RPM. Not anymore, full control now! The spindle is a 1hp HSD, 24000 RPM, with an ER20 collet.

Cool mounting for the stepper drivers.

Uwe

suntravel wrote: ↑Sun Mar 30, 2025 2:50 pm Cool mounting for the stepper drivers.

Uwe

Yeah, didn't give it a thought until I took one of the drivers out of the box and sat in on the original back plane and saw that they were too tall to clear the deck. Laying them flat on their back just took up too much space. The angle mounts worked out great.