will it work or not

[JAZZCNC]

Hi Ernie,

Well, you don't actually say what size Nema23 motors so it's hard to give an accurate answer. However, I have built several machines which lift the whole gantry like what you are planning that was made from 25mm Aluminium plate and much heavier than your MDF setup using 2 x 4Nm Nema 23 motors with 10mm pitch screws and they didn't even know they were lifting it.
So if you are using at least 2Nm with a decent amount of volts then I'm 99.9% sure you won't have any issues lifting an MDF gantry.

This one used a single 4.5Nm Nema 34 Closed-loop motor connected to the 2 x 10mm pitch screws with a belt and a slight ratio of 1:5.