Added steel channel to X-axis c-beam

**Clive S** · 24-06-2018

I'd love to hear your thoughts on these two issues.
Cheers!

Yes what Doddy said

**routercnc** · 24-06-2018

Supported rail will be better than the wheels you have now and my previous machine ran on those for a few years. But there can be some maintenance such as sometimes the bearing coming loose in the housing plus there was some wear on my set that I noticed when I took them apart and was the likely cause of it getting worse for chatter.
So if you stay in this hobby you will get linear profile rails in the end.
As for the gantry sides - looks like they are the drop down style to raise the gantry. So they need to be quite thick. If they are aluminium then they should ideally be 20mm. But if they are steel they can be thinner. Steel is 3 times stiffer than aluminium, just in terms of material properties, but then when you go thinner you quickly loose out due to geometry (which is independent of material) so . . . go for 12.5 mm over 6.35 mm.
Better still if doing a really good upgrade raise the bed sides so the gantry doesn’t have to drop down and you will gain much more than trying to get stiffness back in the side plates.

**Ger21** · 24-06-2018

Linear rails are far superior to round supported rails.

**wiremonkey** · 24-06-2018

OK gents, I hear you! Dang, y'all are making me spend more money! Ha! I'm a bit afraid of epoxy since it's out of my wheel house. Does anyone have a simple tutorial for using epoxy to do some leveling?
I think I'm going to give these a whack:

http://www.automation-overstock.com/...sp?prod=BLH20N

Wish me luck! Video to come.

**wiremonkey** · 27-06-2018

Well folks, I ordered the linear rails and have a line on the proper epoxy. Today I'm going to do a few more welding practice runs before I actually weld the end plates onto the steel beam. I'll let you know how she turns out.
Thanks again for all of your help!

**Hulksmash** · 15-07-2018

Sorry to jump onto this thread but I was looking at the same thing.....

I was thinking of using c-beam with 4x2x1.5mm box section with welded ends in each beam and using 2x of them. So the beam would be basically 80x80mm all bolted together.

My other thought was maybe 3x 8020 v slot bolted together.

My design was also to use 15mm aluminium to keep the weight down but I may consider steel now....

I am making a hybrid router plasma, well designing atm so I need speed too...

I am too designing with a vslot aluminium rails and wheels but am considering linear rails now on steal also...

Budget is a massive consideration too.

Regards

Mike.

Ps I posted the same on openbuilds site...

**wiremonkey** · 16-07-2018

Howdy, no problem Mike.
If you're only plasma cutting, an aluminum extrusion machine is most likely plenty strong enough since there are no real forces at work on the moving cutter, only slinging around the weight of the cutting head itself. It's when you start applying the forces from a rotating spindle head on wood or metal that rigidity becomes critical as I'm sure you know.
Good luck!