Gantry design question

[D.C.]

Hi DC
Welcome to the forum

Thanks for the welcome, I think the CF is a non-starter for me though, I realised when checking the easycomposites website that there must be bug or browser conflict as the prices were not changing when differing thicknesses and sheet sizes were selected. What I had priced up as being about double\triple the cost turns out to be ten times or more expensive.

Ooops...

The aluminium honeycomb from there is still a good price though so I may look at doing a laminate design but it would be with thin steel or aluminium not CF, it's a shame but I'll have to shelve it for a few years and see if the price of carbon fibre comes down.


I did find a similar thread to this one on cnczone and apparently there is one company that do use composites for CNC but it is for an ultra precision machine:
DMG | DECKEL MAHO | GILDEMEISTER - HSC 20 linear | Precision Center

There is also this company making ultra high end machine components from composites beams with steel linear rails attached (look at the piccy):
Composite Machine Building Components


They both use composites for extreme rigidity, as do photographers, astronomers, sailors etc etc so I think the idea is sound but the price needs to lose a zero off the end before it comes into the reach of the dirty plebs.