Hi All,
Building a CNC router table is such a great idea. I've been building furniture for a long time but I'm a better designer than a patient woodworker.
I keep pondering having an 8' gantry that travels 4'. Here's my newbie thinking; The gantry will be heavy due to it's length and extra support to compensate it's span but it's driven by two screws. You will need less screw length; two 4' sections in the X and one 8' in the Y for a total of 16' compared to 20' if the axis were reversed.
I'm not going to dive into such a large bed for my first build. I'll start with a smaller machine to learn from and use it to build a larger one. That brings me to my second question. Can you cut aluminum with a CNC router that was intended for wood?
Scott