[lukewarm]

Let me just start off by thanking you in advance for any input, negative or positive, that you can supply. I am preparing myself for a fire storm of negative comments, lol.

We're building a gantry style CNC mill right now, the thread for it can be found in the wood machine section. In the beginning we were hoping for a wood capable table that might see some light duty aluminum cutting. But now we're wondering if our rigidity might not suffice for light steel work? It was never our intent to build a gantry style mill for steel so the design is probably all wrong for precision milling. I've attached some photos of the construction so far. I would be thankful to anyone who could point out any problems with our design.

For those interested in the design specifics the bed is made out of 6" I-Beam and weighs close to 1000 pounds as a very rough guess. The gantry is a piece of 6" by 10.5" I-Beam capped by end plates of 1/2" plate metal. The gantry weight is currently around 350 pounds without the Z-Axis carriage which we expect to add another 200-250 pounds including the X2 milling head and motor (it will be counter balanced). The z-axis will be mounted on 2" shaft running through Rulon bearings. Both the x and y carriages currently are mounted on 4" sawmill carriage wheels that temporarily run on angle iron (until we finish casting and scraping the cast iron replacements)

Thanks again,