Originally Posted by
boydage
Thanks for the input. The material is all 5mm stock except for the feet being 200/10mm mild steel, and its too heavy until I cut it into lengths. The 152/76mm I cant lift alone ha.
Drawing designs up and playing around with ideas I am in the middle of making this. I know it may well be overkill, but in all honesty spending a few additional hours cutting a bunch of triangles and welding them in this should be quite rigid. What is difficult to show, is in the center of the machine, I have also added 6 stringers at run at diagonals to the Y and Z, ie from the top corner across and down to a lower corner. It kind of ties it all together. I am a tad worried about introducing too much heat to the top rail so am going to tack it in say 20mm welds spaced out.
I plan to manufacture each side piece separately. Then bring them together keeping everything as level and square as I can with what I have. The T Slot table is going to be bolted to the 100/16mm steel bars. Between the table and the bars, I am thinking about bolting some largish alloy washers down onto the steel bars, then milling them to height with the spindle. Not sure if that introduces implications or not? Its all about the rails that the gantry moves on huh? They need to be perfect in relation to each other correct? Once they are correct, then everything needs to be aligned with them as a central point of measure.
I think, that this should be ok. What I dont think, is that I will have a damaged ego if someone spots an error or improvement. Thats what this is all about. I was looking at the timber frame I made in 2016 and think this will be much better lol. Thoughts?
P.S: I plan to weld a cover over the ends of the open rectangulars if that makes sense. I think that will both look better and improve strength.