Originally Posted by
peteeng
Hi Jayne - When I look at your current design (based on others work) I see a mixture of philosophies and technologies. On one hand the gantry is a construction extrusion and this is usually chosen for convenience. It has suitable end holes and slots for mounting stuff. But all convenient solutions have down sides. Rails are mounted on thin pieces of metal, the section is not optimised for stiffness, its actually costly compared to a std SHS section, I could go on. Then the columns and other parts are nicely billet machined. This means they are many $$$ but being billetted can be optimized for their use so the $$$ are well spent. If you have access to billet machined stuff and its cost effective then flick the extrusions and go all the way.... a plate gantry machined will be stiffer and more accurate then a multipart construction extrusion ever will be.
So I suggest you mentally summarise the resources and technologies you have available (or want to use) and use them to guide your production path. A common term in architecture at present is that summary will "inform" you of how to go about designing/building your machine. A construction extrusion machine is fine so I'd stay in that universe or the billet universe or whatever build space you choose. Peter