Quote Originally Posted by driftspin View Post

I have no good idea what the shaking forces are like in real life.
These depend on the mass of the moving item and your acceleration/deceleration curves.

Don't forget - acceleration/deceleration is king of the hill, its more important than travelling velocity, far more, as it will directly affect the path following ability of the software controller - with these figures too low you will see bad corner rounding etc where the trajectory planner cannot perform the moves in time, the only solution then, if you cant increase accel/decel is to lower the speed, this then gives you issues with cutter burning etc - its a vicious circle but all determined by your acceleration/deceleration curves.

My plasma machine only has a very light gantry - no motor, no cut forces, and it can shake quite badly at times, that has a steel frame too.

Always build as stiff as possible :)