What thickness steel for mounting plate for bearings to gantry

[Desertboy]

Hi, I want to make my mounting plate for my gantry now.

I'm attaching the gantry to SBR25UU bearings (At least 2 of them per side) the rail will be mounted sideways on.


The gantry will be made of 10cm*5cm heavy duty T slot (Probably with angle steel 3mm on the side with the hiwin rail and ballscrew and underneath the steel will be t nut in for extra strength I will mount the carriages so they don't interfere.

I was wondering what thickness steel should I use to be safe I expect the gantry to weigh a fair bit the supported rail is 25mm so I think weight is not so much an issue for the rail or bearings and I can use 3 bearings if need be (2 are 13cm long) I'm going to cu the rail down but I can leave a bit extra overhang so it doesn't affect my working area if I do use 3 bearings. My z axis is going to be heavy as it's going ot be made from this. I will strip it down and have new supports made from more reasonable sized aluminium but it's still going to be heavy. The ballscrew is a 20mm and ground!, the smooth rods are 25mm with bearings. It weighs like 25kg's at moment hoping to get it down to 10kg with the motor & spindle but we will see.



I bought 8 bearings so have spare if weight is an issue.

I will cad this out I was winging it but I think the gantry needs to done in cad so I don't get it wrong.

e2a I want to be able to mill ply and aluminium looking at a 2.2kw water cooled spindle for a start.