Quote Originally Posted by Wobblycogs View Post
I've also thinking about what to do for a bed with t-slots. My first thought was, like you, 20mm aluminium and machine channels into it. Then I saw the price of the piece of aluminium I'd need! It's probably the route I'll end up taking though as it's fairly simple.

The alternative option (which I've not priced up yet) is to get some aluminium profile, lay that on the bed so that it's very close to flat and then take a thin surfacing cut. You can then use the built in t-slots. Not sure how much cheaper that will be in the long run though. If you can get away with using regular or even thin walled profile I suspect it would be cheaper.

I've just about finished buying all the parts for my machine, cheap and simple are not available options
The DIYer biggest problem is that we never know what exactly the machine would be for, so we want it as multi functional as possible. At least that's me.

For now the best i thought of would be to do the bed in the following manner:

Most of it Plywood with nuts covered by expanded PVC sheet 10mm, covered by another sacrificial sheet of the same material. The area near me/ the first square meter/, made with the thick alu channel extrusion + sacrificial PVC, or all same but holes left for a toolplate that can be bolted over all directly to the supporting beams. Or the first square meter made from square bars, cut and bolted so that emulate tool plate. Even if not perfect, they will be strong to bolt to and the plastic over them will be resurfaced. I even think that that type of machine could scratch steel, so i could resurface them directly.