Hi everyone,

Irving, Old RSJ's were that flat, back when it was British Steel and they took a pride in their product and maintained the rollers. A granite surface would do perfectly but don't let the arc stray too near or you'll crack it for sure:). Circular saw would eat PVC, just run it against a guide and the planer was only so I could guarantee 90 degree edges and to get rid of saw marks :)

Gary, yes please point anybody you like to the thread. If I can help them by answering any questions they have, I'd be more than pleased to.

Lee, I got the PVC from work as offcuts. We use it for fixtures for a candle molding production line at a factory here. It was much cheaper than Aluminium both to buy and machine plus it is impervious to moisture and the acids they use.

We buy it from the Pipeline Centre in Glasgow (plastics dept) but we have bought it from Direct Plastics . I think I worked it out at around £80 ish for the amount I used. Luckily i got mine for nothing as they were offcuts as I said but I would regard the price as more than worth it considering I was going to the trouble of building a steel framed router. I wouldn't like anyone to think PVC is a replacement for Aluminium but it allows you to have much of the rigidity of metal with the ease of working wood. If you go to the direct plastics site and read the data on PVC, you will see why I chose to make the parts I did from it.

Once I have the wiring sorted out (going to try Irving's suggestion this weekend), I'm onto the base frame. Again this will be steel and extremely rigid. At the moment I have the Router top frame just sat on my worktop bench which mimics how the real working surface would be. This way I can try the router and make any mods before I have it permanently mounted on its real base. One good thing has emerged from doing it this way. My workbench is very solidly built (I know 'cause I built it :)) and you cannot move it by pushing it. The router gantry weighs a good 100 pounds and you would not believe how much inertia is passed from the gantry down into the bench, I could literally shake it to bits by moving the Y axis back and forth with too much acceleration so I have adjusted the acceleration to such a rate that the bench almost doesnt react to the movement of any axis, not a very scientific approach but it should ensure a long life for the machine.

I'll post more photos as I continue.

I don't know if this would be of any advantage to anyone but once I've finished building my machine I will have a full CAD drawing done in Solidworks which I would be willing to upload. I could upload it as an E-Drawing (Solidworks own viewer) which would allow other forum members to view it as a model to get ideas or even generate a drawing for making their own.

Take care all,