Aluminium Extrusion Question

[PuppyWoofie]

The design you have linked to is a good start. For the X-rails (4-5' ?) you should put some more supports in the middle to avoid having a long unsupported section

The spreadsheet Mocha referred to can be found by searching 'gantry stiffness calculation':
http://www.mycncuk.com/forums/linear...alculator.html

However it doesn't support extrusion, unless you draw the extrusion in a CAD program (e.g. Solid Edge, Solid Works, Pro-engineer) which will tell you the area moment of inertia for the cross section, which can then be entered into the spreadsheet. You can also sometimes find the numbers on the manufacturer's website.

Don't worry, on the X axis I wasn't going to have it exactly as shown there, that is just what I'm going for as far as the gantry goes, so I can eliminate the gantry sides as a point of deflection. I'll most likely have the X supported with a post every half foot to foot with 60x60 extrusion, plus the brackets which will be 30x30 or 60x60 if I can find them, reducing the un-supported sections even more.

It's mainly the gantry I'm worried about, since it will hold the router, 2 rails and the Z axis.

But since my supported rails have a hole spacing of 30mm, the only extrusion I can bolt it to directly are multiples of 30... 60x120 being the largest I can find.

The calculator now seems to support the aluminium extrusion and if I've done it correctly there should be less than a mm deflection, 0.19 on the Z and 0.016 on the X.