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

[Voicecoil]

problem is finding somewhere to buy it in UK.

Talk to Pamela at MBS <[email protected].> they're the UK agents for Item stuff, seem to be able to get most stuff within a week or so. Not cheap, but then quality rarely is I guess, and they seem to be a good source of heavyweight profiles.

BTW, how does your tramming plate work please? is the back of it machined to a very gentle radius so you can tilt it?

[Zeeflyboy]

Thanks - they are actually the other one I sent an enquiry to but from the look of their website was not sure they sell to plebs.

Tramming plate only trams in one axis (left/right as you look at the machine head on), the entire gantry will be able to be trammed fore/aft (the Z-axis can also be trammed left/right independent of the tramming plate) to make sure the axis of movements are correct. Plan for spindle is to tram fore/aft with shim stock then left/right using the tramming plate. The issue I always had tramming just with shim stock is that you would get one axis in, then the other would be out... this way should work well for me.

[Zeeflyboy]

Talk to Pamela at MBS <[email protected].> they're the UK agents for Item stuff, seem to be able to get most stuff within a week or so. Not cheap, but then quality rarely is I guess, and they seem to be a good source of heavyweight profiles.

BTW, how does your tramming plate work please? is the back of it machined to a very gentle radius so you can tilt it?

MBS got back to me very quickly with a quote - not a cheap piece of extrusion, comes to around £200 with cut and delivery... in for a penny in for a pound though I guess!

[Voicecoil]

MBS got back to me very quickly with a quote - not a cheap piece of extrusion, comes to around £200 with cut and delivery... in for a penny in for a pound though I guess!

That doesn't altogether suprise me - I got them to quote on a ~1.3m length of the 120x120 profile and that was the neck end of £200 + VAT. On the subject of the tramming plate, I assume the thing at the top LHS corner is an eccentric bolt of some kind?

[Zeeflyboy]

Nevermind, it's done. Thought I'd go for it before I had time to think and change my mind!

[Zeeflyboy]

Want to give a big thumbs up to machine building systems - extrusion arrived already and it was incredibly well packed (much better than the misumi ones were!) with a good wrapping of cardboard and wooden end blocks.

Quick pic comparing it to current machine, it's a beasty extrusion to be sure - thanks for prompting me to "upgrade", think it'll be worth it.

[Voicecoil]

Ooooh, that is even more chunky than I thought it would be.

[jarjar]

Looks good. Can't wait to see this beast making some chips.