Jill of all trades, but mistress of few !

[Gary]

I think she means the Y axis.
Moving a large gantry is better to drive from both sides or you can get crabbing even with good quality profile rails.
This is more promenent if you are cutting on one side.

Hi Julie

That's to be avoided like the plague :nope:

First you have to decide what kind of accuracy you want to achieve for the cut. Think resolution. The motor moves the table by one increment. A small increment improves the accuracy of the cut. A large increment improves your top speed which is handy when you want to move 8' ASAP.

When you have an accuracy figure in mind you can decide how to drive it. Screws, rack and pinion, belting? The lower the accuracy the cheaper it becomes. It's all trade offs, what are you trying to achieve? Are we talking mass production where speed is king? Are we talking bespoke and it doesn't really matter if it takes 2 minutes to move end to end at a lowly 2 cm/second?

Robin