Hi, I'm plodding away with my first router build and am getting close to mounting the gantry now. I got my spindle last week (2.2kw) and weighed it with the mount at 6.5kg's. Add Z axis and motor we're getting over 10kg's. I have 50mm*100mm heavy duty bosch profile as my gantry. My gantry will be 1650mm long, I'm going to embed the gantry 5mm into the mounting plates (25mm tooling aluminium) for extra support.



The plan is to fill the cavities with a mix
50% aluminium filler powder
35% Epoxy resin
15% Carbon Fibre powder

then cure in a water bath to stop it overheating and warping.

It's a simple cure the resin I am going to use would benefit from a 2nd cure but much more difficult to pull off so for my first gantry I will only do the simple cure. If this works well on my next build I will do the 2nd cure and the strength should be comparable to a solid steel core, with the simple cure it should be stronger than a solid aluminium core but weaker than steel which for the 4.2kg's it adds in weight will be a good trade off.

I was wondering has anyone else ever tried to do this? Does anyone see any issues with this?