Has anyone done a side by side comparison of the rigidity of xcarve’s x-axis extrusion vs shapeoko 2’s bolted two plates? Does it actually increase the rigidity? If so, is it a substantial increase or only a marginal increase?
Here is my opinion (for what that is worth), the SO2 X-Axis was very rigid when it was properly tightened and aligned. The problem I had was keeping it properly tightened and aligned. There were just a lot of spacers, washers and nuts in that assembly and at any given moment about 10 percent of them were looser than they should be. That looseness directly reduced the rigidity.
The X-Carve X-Axis has way fewer parts to come loose so it tend to stay aligned and rigid without constantly checking all the nuts and bolts.
The Z-Axis mounting to the X-Axis is also simpler and much more rigid.
Even more importantly, the spindle connector is MUCH better, the SO2 spindle connection was a constant source of error since it would allow the spindle to deviate from being perfectly perpendicular to the work surface. The new X-Carve mount completely removes that problem.
All of that is made possible by the new X-Axis extrusion.
But if you just installed the new X-Axis and then reattached the old Z-Axis and spindle mount then you might not see as much improvement.