Oh crumbs. Here we go!

[hoppo]

Blimey a big thumbs up to Chai, unbelievable service, guess what turned up on my doorstep this morning, all the way from China, less than a week after ordering?

I was like a kid at Christmas this morning. Only problem now is that I was expecting it to take at least a couple more weeks to arrive and hopefully I'd have been well on the way to completing some sort of design! Which I haven't!

What I have managed to do is think a bit about my YAxis, and have come up with a couple of ideas, nothing revolutionary and not anything that you'll not have seen before, and this is where the questions start to flow.

Up until now I've been hoping to use aluminium extrusion, for ease and simplicity, but having another browse through the other builds got thinking about using aluminium plate. Is there any advantage of using plate? On my second design in the pics attached to this post I think this would work better with aluminium plate, instead of using the extrusion and then I was thinking I could move the ball screw onto the same side as the rails. My only concern is the extra cost involved in getting the pieces made up. What are the comparative costs in buying a 750mm length of extrusion and say a 750x300x20mm plate? Is 20mm thick enough as a back plate for a Y Axis?

Of my two initial ideas below I'm leaning towards the first one as it just looks stronger, but am all ears as to any thoughts, advice on improvements, amendments, materials etc etc.