Thanks a lot for your input.

I imagined 8mm steel is equal to 24mm aluminium if it's 3 times stiffer. I guess the extra distance between the aluminium faces mean it might not work quite as simply as that.

Peeteng, its interesting you were able to go to just 6mm with the large flanges. Did you use that machine for just wood?


So deeper flanges and thicker plate if I can't increase the flanges height. Hopefully it won't get too heavy if I were the increase plate thickness, I bought a set of 4nm Nema 23 motors to power the cnc. I suppose the plate itself isn't as large as some cnc's are, it will be 30 x 14cm if you don't count the little end section where the motor mounts.