Quote Originally Posted by Blackrat View Post
150x100x4 1600mm wide
Why so Big.? . . . . You'd be better off using smaller size with thicker wall.! . . . Besides Your Gantry design is the weak link here not the material.

To me your focusing on the wrong areas of the build and not looking at the Basic design and foundation. Without good foundations best resonance handling material in the world don't mean diddly squat.!!

Another thing to ask your self is do you really need massive strength.? Silyavski (Boyan) machine is a credit to him but IMO it's massive OTT for anything but aluminium. SO Unless your mostly cutting aluminium do you really need to go that far.? . . . . Like every thing in life Strength comes at a cost in both monetry and performance terms so why waste both if your only using 100% of it 2% of the time.?

All round machines are great but they take much more to build so they do it well and even then they NEVER do it has good as a Machine specificly designed and optimised for that sole purpose.
Remember a good design is built just strong enough to perform it's role with enough safety margin to ensure reliabilty and anything more is waste.!