El Beast - Initial design phase, comments and critique welcomed!

[Zeeflyboy]

I can see where the advantage is, in that the gantry arms can be a fair chunk shorter and thus give more rigidity for a given thickness.

The disadvantages are that it's a potentially a more complicated mounting assembly (especially when ball screws are considered as well), would need extra work to add shielding for the rails and would end up eating into my X-Axis bed area (although actual work area would probably be able to be kept the same with a little careful work, there would be less room for overall material size and clamping.

So the question is whether I go on the basis that 25mm thick plate will be sufficient for the gantry arms at their current length, or whether I want to take those above mentioned compromises in order to gain a little extra rigidity.