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

[Zeeflyboy]

Oh there will be a milled tool plate, but that method doesn't work here.

Imagine that one end of a rail is lower while the other rail is totally level. If you machine the bed flat then you'll have a nice level reading from a dro in the spindle making you think you have a flat bed. In reality it would be twisted towards the rail that is lower at one end.

That was the importance of using this eco-cast bed as a flat reference, since its basically the flattest thing that I could find readily available at reasonable cost. To do things properly and get the best end result, it needs to be as closely aligned to the ecocast plate as possible before moving on to milling a separate took plate once the machine is assembled.

It's one of the challenges of mounting these rails on the side. If they were flat on the plate then it would be a non issue.