My Build - I blame you lot for this....!

[bjamc13]

Dear Steve,

Absolutely amazing. Very nice and clean design. I would like to build a similar construction like your. You used 80 x 40 alu extrusion for bed. I have 50x50 extrusion for cheap price. What do you think: bolting together two of them would give the same rigidity like one 80x40? Or it is not the way to go?

[HiltonSteve]

Dear Steve,

Absolutely amazing. Very nice and clean design. I would like to build a similar construction like your. You used 80 x 40 alu extrusion for bed. I have 50x50 extrusion for cheap price. What do you think: bolting together two of them would give the same rigidity like one 80x40? Or it is not the way to go?

Thanks for the comments...

The reason for using 80 x 40 extrusion was so that I had a nice large surface area on the ends to help pull everything square when I bolted it together, and also in the 80 x 40 there are 2 mounting holes in each end which I tapped out M12, this meant I could put some decent size bolts in and really tighten them up to keep everything solid.

I can not see why 50 x 50 will not work on its own but putting 2 together to make 100 x 50 will certainly be better. Whether you need to do it depends on what you are thinking of using the machine for and how solid you want to make it.

Quick tip, obvious maybe, but when you drill the two endplate's that the extrusions are bolted to then clamp them together and drill all the mounting holes at the same time through both plates, it will make life a lot easier when trying to square the bed/machine up.

[bjamc13]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the advices. Of course I will make the drilling as you suggested. I got the 15 m of this 50x50 extrusion for 80 EUR, so I don't have bad feeling using them all to build a solid machine.
I intend to mill wood, plastic and alu, but not the harder metals.
It seems that ZAPP has quite good prices for ballscrews&nuts, it's very likely that I will order from there. I have used ball screws, but they are heavy weight really: 40x12 in three sizes 400mm/10000mm/1080mm. I don't know if I will use them ever, because I don't want to waste so much power to move the gantry with these brutal screws. But if someone has good ideas how to utilize them .....