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IndustryArena Forum > Mechanical Engineering > T-Slot CNC building > Aluminum T-Slot Build Using Misumi Extrusion
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  1. #1
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    Apr 2010
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    Aluminum T-Slot Build Using Misumi Extrusion

    I debated in which forum to post this, but since Misumi doesn't seem to get a lot of discussion, it seemed warranted to put a build log here to show what their products look like and what the US company can do when ordering almost exclusively over the web.

    Note: I am not affiliated with Misumi or Misumi USA in anyway, shape or form. I am merely a satisfied customer.

    First-off, the basics:
    Machine Type: 2.5D router, primarily for wood
    Cutting dimensions: 1400mm x 1000mm x 150mm
    Total Footprint (LxWxH): 2310mm x 1290mm x 1400mm
    Construction: Aluminum with some steel
    Budget: Let's not go there ("around $5k" before software)

    The Design
    I have read a ton of build threads, bought plans from Joe, and taken copious quantities of notes over about 18 months of planning and procuring. Not to be modest, but I would say that there is absolutely nothing that is interesting or new about my build other than I am using a less well-known supplier for most of my mechanical parts (Misumi). Granted, I've got some high-end parts scavenged via the eBay gods, but the design can be summed up this way: moving gantry, underslung screw drive using ball screws and linear guides. However, since I placed this thread in the T-slot forum, a critical question worth answering: why did I choose Misumi instead of 80/20 or even Bosch, well, that may be an interesting divergence.

    I originally started with the idea of using 80/20 and going the typical eBay route for procurement. However, 80/20 does not offer any machining services on its eBay products, so I spent a fair bit of time trying to find good deals on pieces that looked to be about the right size for the machine I wanted (I was/am targeting being able to machine a half-sheet of Baltic Birch plywood - approx. 60"x30").

    While scanning eBay for good deals on stuff, I happened to find, in rapid succession, a 1500mm NSK class 5 ballscrew, a Hirata linear actuator with 1000mm of travel, a Parker Daedal linear actuator with 150mm of travel, and two THK SR30 rails that are 2100mm long. This was a big haul of high-end parts for a shade over $1500. Now to keep looking for that aluminum...

    I ended up finding a Texas company with a load of Bosch Rexroth 4590 "heavy" extrusions at approximately 7' lengths (really a bit short of that, it turns out). I did some quick sketches to be sure that I knew about how much I would need, and I placed the order, plus I got some gussets for connections and some 45" long lengths to act as posts and stringers. Good so far?

    I was on a hunt for a nut bracket housing when my Google skills led me to Misumi's website. I did not find a ball nut housing that was compatible with my NSK screw, but I did find a promotion for 30% off your first order up to $150. Figuring that I knew a decent deal when I found it, I ordered up some of the pieces that would require greater precision than I was really capable of producing with a table saw, circ saw and a drill driver, and I waited for delivery.

    Since this post is getting long and is short on pictures, let me cut to the chase on the Bosch: being unwilling to use my table saw to cut the aluminum meant that I made a hash of several of my pieces of stock. Given the quality of what I was getting from Misumi, I shifted my focus to procuring from Misumi and selling my Bosch Rexroth extrusion after the build was done. Now let's have some pictures of that mess (be gentle).

    One thing of note in the first picture: I bought the "H" or heavy Bosch Rexroth 4590 extrusion. It is made from 6063-T6 aluminum and weighs 4.15kg per meter. The two Misumi pieces in the picture are Misumi's GFS extrusion, which is 6061-T6 aluminum, and they weigh 5.22kg/meter, or about 25% more than the Bosch ones. If you bought both new, the Misumi extrusion would also be a few dollars cheaper per meter than the Bosch. Misumi's "standard" extrusion, the HFS series, weighs 4.14kg per meter, or basically the same as Bosch's "Heavy" extrusions, and they use 6005-t5 aluminum (similar to what 80/20 uses).

    Here are some thoughts from ALCOA on 6063-T6 vs. 6005-T5 and 6105-T5:
    http://www.alcoa.com/adip/catalog/pd...y_60056105.pdf
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails bosch_vs_misumi.jpg   bosch1.jpg   bosch2.jpg   bosch3.jpg  

    bosch4.jpg  

  2. #2
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    Bringing the Gantry Together

    My first order from Misumi was a bunch of GFS8-4590 (the HEAVY kind) chopped up into little pieces to make up my gantry. Lots of people go with a heavy beam of some sort for the main structure of the gantry (the 3" x 6" 80/20 extrusion is popular) since the support arms of the gantry need to clear the cutting area of the Y-axis fully.

    For me, I am starting with a Hirata MB-202AP, which is essentially a 20-10 ground ball screw, linear guides, a mounting table and a motor mount all wrapped in a heavy aluminum extrusion. Because I don't think this was the version designed specifically for mounting vertically, I added an extra reinforcing extrusion on the back. The rest of the frame, then, looks a lot like a chair or a lower case "b".

    What I like about the Misumi extrusion and machining service is that I can specify cuts to 0.5mm and get tolerances to 0.2mm (with an upcharge, of course!). When using the "blind joints", this stuff comes together very, very tight. There is no play in any direction with just a few of the screws tightened up. Seriously, I had to use a mallet to move the center support bars into position.

    Also visible in the photos are the extrusions I am using to adapt the Y-axis table so that it will mate with the Z-axis table ("dipping" style Z-axis). More on that later.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails gantry1.jpg   gantry2.jpg   gantry3.jpg   Y+Zaxes2.jpg  

    y+Zaxes3.jpg   y+Zaxes4.jpg  

  3. #3
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    Apr 2010
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    Access Casters Rock!!

    I came across Access Casters in a few builds (e.g., MRM RC Models Build), so I went searching for them on The 'Bay. While they list for close to $80/ea. in the size I needed (one with a 16mm threaded insert), I quickly found them for $29/ea. I ordered 6 of them, and they arrived within a few days, factory-fresh from Korea.

    The hardest part about getting them installed was finding a source for a M12 20mm socket cap screw. However, living in a heavy manufacturing city meant that I just needed to look a bit to find someone with them in stock. The third and fourth pictures show both the two M12 SHCS that attach the end-plate to the extrusion and the 16mm all-thread that connects the end-plate to the caster itself. This stuff is beefy, and with the brass nut cinched tight to the threading in the end-cap, the all-thread isn't going anywhere.

    I think the pictures will be relatively self-explanatory for getting these things together. The only real trick was in setting up the corner posts so that I could put in the support beams for the X-axis linear guides. For that, I used an idle piece of extrusion as a spacer, and a spare 4545 gusset so that I knew approximately where the lower beam will go - the one on which the rails sit (Picture #2). More on that in a bit.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails caster3.jpg   caster4.jpg   caster6.jpg   caster7.jpg  

    caster8.jpg  

  4. #4
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    Dec 2003
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    I have bought a few things off of Misumi and have mentioned them here before.
    Their catalogue and DXF/DWG CD is a great resource.
    For Canadian customers, the import brokerage is paid for on shipping.
    Al.
    CNC, Mechatronics Integration and Custom Machine Design

    “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”
    Albert E.

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by Al_The_Man View Post
    Their catalogue and DXF/DWG CD is a great resource.
    I absolutely agree with this. It was a little bit of a learning curve getting used to their part numbering and ordering system, but having on-demand rendering of the part as you configure it is an amazing help. Combine that with being significantly cheaper (at my volume level) than Bosch, and you can sense why I am so pro-Misumi.

  6. #6
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    Apr 2010
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    It's been over 100 degrees here, and I am waiting for a few more parts (connectors!) that were backordered. So, since my copy of AutoCAD isn't playing nice right now, I did a quick mock-up of the frame design in FrameDesigner from FramExpert (FrameXpert | Custom Industrial Aluminum Furniture). It's similar to Sketchup, but solely focused on 8020 and Maytac framing components right now. It also has a very limited selection of which profiles it supports. In other words, it produces some pretty pictures, but it's not useful to make a real BOM for my frame design. In theory a new version will be coming soon, so it may overcome these limitations shortly.

    I should have a large amount of parts arriving tomorrow, so hopefully I can get the basic mechanical build finished by the end of the weekend.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Frame Design1.jpg   Frame Design2.jpg   Frame Design3.jpg  

  7. #7
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    Apr 2010
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    I had a great coincidence today. As luck would have it, a large shipment of backordered parts arrived on the same day that we had our first significant rainstorm in several months. With temperatures not breaking much above 80, I was able to put in several hours in the garage.

    Motor Mount and Drive Axis
    Several of the key parts that arrived today were ones I needed for the structure to support the X-axis ball screw and other drive mech. This involved installing the center-line extrusions plus the motor mount and beginning to square the resulting structure in a more meaningful way than just going by feel.

    The idea for the motor mount and the interface between the motor and the screw came straight from the CNC Router Parts and Fine Line Automation 2'x3' aluminum router concept. The only real difference is scale. Rather than being limited to a 3' X-axis and an ACME screw, I am using a 25mm ball screw with 5' (1500mm) of threading. Assembly required a specific order since the heads of the socket cap screws that attach the motor mount would be occluded by the extrusion where the screw attaches, but that was really the only trick.

    So, first I used some "high precision" 45x45mm aluminum extrusion to act as a spacer to center the longitudinal extrusion and attach it to the "far" (inboard) joist using double-blind joints. I then attached the motor mount (it's a NEMA 34, by the way) to the end joist and attached that to the frame. Then I brought the free end of the longitudinal extrusion into place, using another 45x45 extrusion to check center, and then I tightened the blind joint on that end a bit. A quick check with a 6" machinist's square and some light taps with the dead blow (rubberized) hammer, and it was in place.

    You can see how it all came together in the fifth picture. It's starting to look like a CNC frame, finally.

    Given that I paid extra to have everything that matters "precision" cut (tolerance: +/- 0.2mm vs. +/- 0.5mm), the extrusions are fit very tightly. Even before adding tension from the joining hardware, the extrusions are hard to move. The dead blow hammer is a must-have piece of equipment for this build, though the tightness of the fit does give me confidence that final squaring of the critical angles won't require too massive of changes once everything is in place. Also, I'll know more about how accurate Misumi's machining is once I get the motors, screw and coupler installed and aligned, but I have been very impressed with the quality, fit and finish of the stuff they've done for me so far. A few odd scratches here and there on the extrusions, but beyond that, the alignment of the stuff that matters has been spot-on to date.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Misumi_worked_metal_plates.jpg   attaching_motor_mount1.jpg   attaching_motor_mount2.jpg   attaching_motor_mount3.jpg  

    attaching_motor_mount4.jpg   centering_drive_axis.jpg  

  8. #8
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    Apr 2010
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    Misumi Deflection Calculator

    With only one commenter, I'm not sure anyone else is really reading this thread. However, search might eventually lead someone to it. As a result, here is a down-and-dirty deflection calculator I worked up in Excel. It is only focused on the "8-45" extrusions from Misumi that have been of interest to me. These are the larger structural extrusions with a 10mm wide slot, targeted to work with M8 screws. These can get to be pretty beefy (e.g., the 100mm x 200mm extrusion is over 20kg/meter), so if you need bigger, I want pictures of what it is you are building.

    Note 1: I did cross-check the results I was getting for the HFS series extrusions versus the calculator I have from Bosch for its 45 heavy series extrusions. The results closely correlate as one would expect when the materials and geometry are similar and they are within 10g/meter of the same weight.

    Note 2
    : For improved accuracy, one would want to model the deflection inherent in the beam under its own weight as well as the deflection that results directly from the load (inherent deflection will be a continuous load, evenly distributed). I did not do that, so these numbers will be a touch optimistic for deflection.

    For those looking for Imperial/English measurements, I invite you to research the CONVERT function in Excel. Since basically everything I've been dealing with has been metric, I am doing all of my design and build in metric.
    Attached Files Attached Files

  9. #9
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    May 2011
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    14
    No worries, I'm sure other forum members are watching this thread. :wave:

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by Spotswood View Post
    No worries, I'm sure other forum members are watching this thread. :wave:
    Fair enough! (group)

  11. #11
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    Apr 2010
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    Ball Screw

    I spent the better part of the morning on a bicycle, so there's not much progress to report today. I did get the X-axis ball screw (or is it ballscrew?) mounted and found an unfortunate design oversight. The center line extrusions where the BF plate attaches is too short versus where I need it. It's not a huge expense to replace it with a longer part (<$50), but it is sure annoying. This is the downside of doing most of my design and clearance-checking in 2D, I guess.

    Today's efforts also pointed out just how much I hate stooping and how useful a mechanics trolley would be when having to work from the floor. Of course, I would have almost no use for it afterward, but one can fantasize while one is sitting on one's rear end squeezing into too small of a space trying to work.

    That being said, the steel plates that Misumi manufactured for me to mount the BK (fixed) and BF (simple) bearing housings are turning out to be fantastic. The fit seems to be basically spot-on and everything screws in with that nice final "locking" feel to it. It also helps that they were half the price, delivered, versus what local shops were wanting.

    Note: according to the packaging, these are actually being made in Japan and shipped back to the US. I'm not sure how the logistics costs make that feasible, but I bet that there's a fair bit of software and very little human interaction to get these parts made. Machines making machines. Very cool.

    Oh, yeah, for anyone who has yet to learn this lesson: clamps. It's all about having the right clamps. Sometimes I forget or get stubborn, and things don't go as quickly or as well as I thought it might in my (optimistic) mind's eye. Then, I look at the wall and think of just the right one for a task, and it goes so, so much more easily.

    Also, regarding the Access Casters: I wish they had a locking mechanism, as well as the leveling, so I didn't have to chock them. Beyond that, they work really, really well -- even on our rough-pour garage floor. They are a great bargain.

    Two more major tasks to do on the mechanical build: mount the linear guides and then mount the gantry. The first isn't as easy as it seems since the rails have picked up some "gunk" along the way, so I really need to clean them first. However, that is a task for another day. On to pictures.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails ballscrew_nut_and_housing.jpg   motor_mount_and_bk_bracket.jpg   bf_mounted.jpg   bk_mounted.jpg  


  12. #12
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    Apr 2010
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    Some progress to report, but not a lot. My last set of parts from Misumi should arrive next week, the ones to fix my oversight above plus a few goodies I wanted to play with (swank locating pins!). With temperatures hitting upwards of 100 degrees, progress has definitely been slow and sweaty, rather than slow and steady.

    I had a 10lb bag of powdered citric acid arrive from Amazon today (ironically, supplied by a company here in Houston), so with luck, tomorrow should be rail cleaning day. Once the rails are clean, I can get them re-mounted and the support extrusion bolted into the machine base. At that point, I can start squaring the base frame before the last few parts arrive for the gantry. Then comes the fun task of really squaring everything that matters and leveling the full assembly. My target for basic construction completion is mid-July. After that, electronics time!

  13. #13
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    Dec 2003
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bear5k View Post
    With only one commenter, I'm not sure anyone else is really reading this thread.
    .
    Shows 381 views so far!
    Al.
    CNC, Mechatronics Integration and Custom Machine Design

    “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”
    Albert E.

  14. #14
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    May 2011
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    No worries. I post build logs of custom PC cases that I'm building, which often don't get too many responses/replies as well:







    (group)

    Build on! :banana:

  15. #15
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    I'm watching, find what you are doing very interesting, please continue.

  16. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by lovebugjunkie View Post
    I'm watching, find what you are doing very interesting, please continue.
    Thanks!

  17. #17
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    I need to go shoot some pictures with recent progress, but let me try to give a quick update. I don't have any "action" shots since between the lithium grease on the rails and the sweat that poured out of me from the heat, getting the beam + rail assemblies mounted was a slippery, ugly process that didn't lend itself to also having a camera nearby. It took much, much longer to get done what I had wanted, and in the process, I ended up ruining the spacing between rails and the table. It's not horrendously off, but this is an area where I'd almost rather be a centimeter off than be a few millimeters off. I've got an idea for a basic alignment "jig" that will help, but it means a further delay before completing the mechanical build.

    Some thoughts and lessons-learned from this process:

    1) Butt joints are better. When I put the design together, I had really wanted to use butt joints to mount the beams that support the linear guides. However, because I got the beams milled, the machining necessary to use the "double blind" joints was not available. I had Misumi custom quote such machining for me, and the answer was 4x the cost. Thanks, but no thanks. That being said, I had also thought about just getting the ends tapped, which leads to lesson #2.

    2) Don't get wedded to immaterial specifications. Part of the point of highlighting the Misumi services in my build is that Misumi puts a lot of power into a buyer's hands with its Web Ordering System (WOS, in their lingo). Unlike 80/20, which requires you to fill out an offline order form (maybe the ACAD plugin is more automatic?), Misumi has a pretty impressive online configuration engine for common machining tasks. That being said, there are tolerances and limitations for what they are willing to offer customers. This created two issues which had a collectively easy answer, but ones I did not see at the time. Maybe someone will find this helpful when faced with a similar dilemma.

    For the GFS (super heavy) extrusions I am using for corner posts, Misumi did not offer the M12 counterboring I wanted to use that would allow the butt end of the rail beams to be screwed into the sides of the corner posts. Since I wanted all of the table support "joists" to have a common dimension (1060mm), the corner posts are joined to the beams on the 45mm wide side (see the model in post #6). Because I had not "done the math" and was still suspicious that I was getting an equivalent or better product at a much cheaper price, I was mentally wedded to the GFS extrusion (heavier is better, especially for a critical structural member, right?). If I had switched to the HFS extrusion (which is only marginally less strong than the Bosch "heavy" extrusion I was planning to use), then I could have had the M12 holes and counterboring done. That was the first problem, and one I thought a lot about. The next problem was that I rushed the configuration process a bit more than I should have (anxious to get materials and get building), so I could not find a good way around the next issue, which is what prevented me from doing the right thing, as I see it now.

    Misumi will machine holes only in even millimeter spacing from the "left" end (pick one end to be the "left" and keep it consistent for the rest of the machining). This seems simple enough, except the hole centers for the 4590 extrusions are 22.5mm from the nearest sides of the extrusion and 45mm center-to-center. What this means is that if your extrusion is an integer multiple of a millimeter (e.g., 900mm), and you tried to have machining that would create a flush end-joint, then you would be off by half a millimeter. Your first hole would be at either 22mm (with the joined member too "high") or at 23mm (with the joined member too low), creating a 0.5mm gap, which is enough to feel and certainly worrying when you are aiming for sub-millimeter accuracy.

    What I did not see at the time was that Misumi offers extrusion cuts at 0.5mm intervals. This was an important oversight for me. While I am still convinced that it is an oversight for Misumi not to offer hole machining at the half-millimeter level (and not to offer M12 machining with the GFS extrusions), the practical answer for me should have been to a) switch to the HFS extrusion with the M12 machining, and b) to go with either a post length of 899.5mm or 900.5mm so I could get the machining done with the correct spacing between the table and the rails. From a work height standpoint, that half millimeter was irrelevant, but it was material to the machining ordering process, and I blatantly missed it. Correcting this would be too expensive, so now I go with the alternative approach I had devised, which is a combination joint using both joining plates and gussets. More on that in a bit.

    The upside, I guess: the joints that hold the machine together are going to fail a long, long time before the GFS end-posts get crushed.

  18. #18
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    May 2011
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    :wave: Need pics.

    Also, please add Misumi 's hole/boring nomenclature to some of the above. For example, what's their code for counterboring ?

  19. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by Spotswood View Post
    No worries. I post build logs of custom PC cases that I'm building, which often don't get too many responses/replies as well:
    Nice work

    Do you have anything in a Honduras Mahogany or Burl Walnut?

    Al.
    CNC, Mechatronics Integration and Custom Machine Design

    “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”
    Albert E.

  20. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by Spotswood View Post
    :wave: Need pics.
    On the way. Typing on the computer is much easier than working in the garage when the thermometer is reading 101 in the shade. I wish someone would turn on the A/C around here.

    Also, please add Misumi 's hole/boring nomenclature to some of the above. For example, what's their code for counterboring ?
    It's a little odd and, in general, better done using the product configuration engine rather than ordering outright. Here is a part from a recent order:

    HFS8-4590-384-Z12-YA169-YB214 ($25.20/ea.; $15.28 without machining)

    Translating the above:
    • HFS8- this is the "standard" extrusion (HFS) with a t-slot geared for M8 screws, equivalent to Bosch's Heavy ("H") extrusion. I have not compared for critical dimensional tolerances of new vs. new between Misumi and Bosch, so my opinions on comparability are based upon limited data. The "8-45" t-slots are the only ones where the "8" refers to the target screw size. All of the others are the actual slot width. Based upon my experience with manufacturing systems, I'd guess this nomenclature came about due to a system limitation somewhere (e.g., the HFS6 extrusions have a 6mm wide t-slot opening).
    • 4590 - this is the profile, 45mm * 90mm.
    • 384 - this is the length in millimeters.
    • Z12 - Machined holes for 12mm nominal (nominal plus clearance, or in this case, it is 13mm by spec).
    • YA169 - First hole ("A") is a counterbore in the horizontal direction ("Y"), 169mm from the left end. Horizontal counterbores go in both t-slots for the rectangular extrusions.
    • YB214 - Second hole ("B") is a counterbore in the horizontal direction ("Y"), 214mm from the left end.


    If I had wanted vertical counterbores, the first hole would have been designated XAnnn, the second hole: XBnnn, and so forth. You can have both horizontal and vertical counterbores without requiring a custom quote, but you can't change the nominal hole size (e.g., M8 vertical and M12 horizontal). You also can't get counterbores and wrench holes via the online configuration engine; that requires a custom quote, as well.

    Here's the relevant catalog page for counterbores:
    Misumi PDF Viewer
    ...and wrench holes:
    Misumi PDF Viewer

    This will give you an outline for the various types of machining for cuts and joints:
    Misumi PDF Viewer

    More importantly, here is the web page to configure everything for the HFS and GFS 4545 and 4590 profiles:
    Aluminum Extrusions - 8 Series, Base 45, Four-Side Slots | Mechanical Components for Assembly Automation - Misumi eCatalog

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