I’ve managed to get my Shapeoko working with dual Y servos – why? I was getting tired of the undriven side sloshing around whenever I tried to work harder material. I ordered the extra drive kit from Inventables – it came with some extra hardware that I didn’t need and was missing a part (which i found a substitute for in my parts bin), but overall happy with the purchase.

Since the stepper they provided was not matched to the ones I ordered (I had purchased the mechanical kit only and sourced my own steppers), I repositioned the existing stepper and made the new one the Z-axis. Only issue is that the voltage setting on the Pololu driver isn’t right – the stepper runs a little warmer than I’d like. I need to tweak the pot slightly to bring down the current.

Check out the swapped red/blue wires on the A axis (upper right) so the stepper runs in reverse.

Hoping to do a more extensive writeup of the transformation.

Side note: I tried to run the 6×6 inch calibration pattern (ShapeOko_Calibration_Pattern_01b.nc), but it doesn’t fit into my Shapeoko’s working area – it is about 1/4 inch too small. Will need to edit the original design and try again.