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

[Zeeflyboy]

Yeah yeah, just haven't had time to work on that part yet as i've been re-designing the x-axis gantry and the z-axis first.

Boyan - plan was to mount the rail to the 45x90 and then level it to the ecocast plate bed before tightening down all the screws, which would give alignment in the Z-axis. I suppose you are suggesting that the flatness of the extrusion will leave it slightly "wavey" in the horizontal axis?

What about mounting a 20mm ecocast plate to the extrusion and then the rail to the plate, similar to what i'm ending up doing with the X-Axis?

[Boyan Silyavski]

I am speaking about how you would level the long rails that gantry moves on them / Y/- in the Z plane to be on one plane and at the same time to be flat . I am not so worried about the flatness as you say you will be using Ecocast plate.

[Zeeflyboy]

So the plan was to mount the ecocast bed plate, then using a shim between one of the Y-Carriages and the underside of the bed plate I could fasten the screws moving the carriage as I go, which would end up with the rails level to the ecocast bed surface.

The end pieces I have designed a pocket in the back sides to accept the 45x90 extrusions, which keeps the spacing between front and back consistent and (assuming the shop cuts the extrusions square) should keep things squared up too, and was planning on adding a couple of corner brackets to help keep the squareness of the frame acceptable.




So the only thing that can cause significant issues as far as I can see is that I'm effectively relying somewhat on the flatness of the 45x90x1000mmm extrusions to provide the straightness in the horizontal plane. If the extrusions are slightly bent for example then I could get a slight curve when travelling fore/aft in the Y-axis... that would need fairly accurate shimming to get rid of.

Could be an option to get some 20mm ecocast plate to mount to the 45x90mm and then mount the rails to that perhaps?

e.g: