Building on a lathe idea

[magicniner]

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?

[hanermo2]

Cant add positive advice.

But my "simple" saddle swap to linear slides has so far cost 300+ work hours.

Over 12 fits / fiddle to the ballnut mount, and now servo motor mount, and shear plate/z axis connection.
New limits, fiddle with servo mount size to the saddle plate to clear the motor mount, ...

None of it is very "hard" but all of it is slow and heavy (parts assy == 30 kg).

[m_c]

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.