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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Laying them flat on their back just took up too much space. The angle mounts worked out great.