Thanks. I'm glad to be getting so much constructive feedback! For sure, I'm going to have to fit the pieces together and see how sturdy it is. I'm unsure what kinds of forces are going to be put on it, so I'm really going to have to wait and see.

The rails are solid chrome steel shafts. 20mm on the X and Y and 12mm on the Z.

It's going to be another week before I can put it together, it turns out I'm actually short a couple pieces of 80/20. But other than that, I'm ready to go.

At this point, my biggest concern is still that I need another motor/screw for the Y axis.

I found a solid solution for mounting the delrin nuts to the stages, but it's going to require machining, heh. So I think I'll do it with L-channel just to get the machine running, run some tests, and if all goes well, make the parts. I have little blocks of 6061 that are just the right size. I figure that's fine, even though it means I have to pull the screw assemblies apart to replace the mounts. Since I expect to have to tear it all down to make refinements anyway.

Now for some New-B questions:
Is there a handy resource for getting an understanding of different bit types?
Is there any really basic machining stuff I should know, and is there a good resource for that sort of thing?


With the exception of a couple months of woodshop in high school...over a decade ago...I really have very little experience with power tools. I'm more the soldering iron and multimeter type, than the drill and circular saw type.