Quote Originally Posted by GEOFFREY View Post
D.C. An interesting idea ( from previous posts I realize that you may be "biased" towards epoxy granite) would a granite gantry be very heavy?

I suspect a granite gantry would be far better suited to a fixed rather than moving design (fixed being my "bias")
I'm not really biased I don't think, the reason I keep banging on about trying this approach is that if you look at what the "I have more than god to spend and a team of PhD's working for me sort of places" Things like epoxy granite and carbon fibre are the materials of choice (and trusses are the arrangement of choice).

Cast iron is 250 year old tech for machines and we are using alu and steel because we can't afford to get custom lumps of cast iron done for us and it isn't really feasible to start a smelting foundry in your garden just to make a cnc machine.

But homebrew epoxy granite is feasible. If you use some thin walled steel box section, source a carboard tube for the centre, devise a reasonable mix and do a few experiments to find a good setup that is superior to the empty steel box or alu extrusion/alu plate designs people are using now there is no reason why you can't make a moving gantry with the stuff. Don't forget if you are relying on the epoxy granite for stiffness you can cut down a lot of weight in metal.

A few things to read:

http://www.mycncuk.com/forums/diy-cn...l-casting.html
CNCCookbook: Epoxy Granite Fill

You can actually save weight and get better performance using EG:
http://annals.fih.upt.ro/pdf-full/20...-2012-2-13.pdf
If you design a beam from EG to have the same deflection for a given force it will actually weigh half what the steel does and have superior dampening charcteristics to boot.

PS If you are wondering about the cardboard tube, it is there to turn the energy in the vibration passing through your beam into heat (the energy has to go somewhere and if you want to dampen a vibation you need to suck the energy out of it and turn it into a different form energy or it will just keep on vibrating your beam or be passed into the rest of your machine) The cardboard tube is proven to work in cnc machine beams and also in things like automotive shafts.