Interesting Papers on heavy duty design, vibrations, composites and column design

[D.C.]

A paper comparing the performance of cast iron, steel and epoxy granite.

http://annals.fih.upt.ro/pdf-full/20...-2012-2-13.pdf

[Tenson]

Nice paper and easy to understand :)

I notice that although the epoxy granite has less mass for the same stiffness and better damping over steel and iron, it is also physically larger. In most DIY designs I imagine an acceptable size for the beams is chosen first. I'd be interested to see constant beam size vs. stiffness, mass and damping.

[D.C.]

I'm not sure if I get what you mean about acceptable beam size, a lot of people seem to design the gantry then increase the beam size because they realise the round rails are too wide to attach to the beams and then decide to add another beam when jazz/jon tell them the gantry is crap and far too weak. ;)

Am I being dense and missing something obvious like you mean beam length?