Quote Originally Posted by magicniner View Post
If you have a nice flat topped bed and the only problem is that it's too narrow why not fit a ground plate on top of that giving you the required width?
I did consider that, but my big concern with that approach, is I think realistically I need at least 18" of cross slide travel, so by the time you hang that length of cross slide over the back along with a servo motor, it's an awful lot of weight pivoting around some bolts that would be around 5" between centres.

I'm still at the point of adding sketches/notes/ideas to the notepad, and I now have a pretty good idea of the main layout, but I now need to find some time to do some modelling and some calculations to see if my plan is going to work.