Game on!

[Voicecoil]

With all the beams now anodised I thought it was time to indulge in a bit of damping, as handling the box sections in particular showed that they were ringing a lot at mid-audio frequencies (which match up nicely with the stimulation given by typical spindle speed/cutter flutes). I thought I'd try my old fave Tecsound, but wasn't overly confident of it working as I've never used it on anything thicker than 2mm thick metal sheet before, and the box sections I've used for the side beams and gantry are 7 & 10mm thick wall. However in reality it seems to work pretty well, hanging an untreated section up on a piece of wire and giving a gentle tap with a hammer gives something not unlike a tubular bell, whereas a damped section is just a bit of a thunk. Here's some sound files from the tapping to illustrate the difference
Side beam undamped.mp3
Side beam damped.mp3
Looking at the decay time in an audio editor, the damping has been increased by something like 6X - a useful improvement I think - now to do some of the other parts!