Small rigid router - Design advise needed

[mitchejc]

Silyavski, thanks for the detailed reply, I do value your input. Like many others on here I'm no mechanical engineer and I go with the standard LAR approach which does not always yield scientific correct results, so please bear with me.


No,those thin parts are old fishing rods that I want to glue gun in there just to stiffen up those unsupported sides a little. Yep, its threaded rod just for for alignment when welding :-)


The orange part is 3 x layers of 18mm quality birch plywood glued together and bolted to the base.Considering the thickness of the wood and close spacing of the steel supports under the plywood, and big surface area of the X-axis sides, I think this will be more than strong enough to bolt my X sides to without, right? There's various good reasons why I 'd prefer NOT to weld the X sides directly to the base.


I totally agree, the base structure can be build stronger for less money, but its already build, so I guess that ship has sailed :-)


I sort of agree about the X sides that's not fully supported. I thought if the rail sits on top of 10mmalu on top of 10mm steel flat bar thats on top of the ribs spaced200mm apart it would be good enough? I'll fix that and make it stronger.


As drawn the steel parts of the gantry weighs +- 60kg if I remove the 750 x 100 x 10mm piece of flat bar which does not add much apart from weight. That gives me +-100kg including z and motors which is getting a bit on the heavy side. I can shave off weight by replacing some 10mm ribs with 6mm. I also agree, in this case the round tubes does nothing apart from cosmetics (which is also important to me) but does complicate some things a little bit. I'll get rid of them and go for something more practical. Would that be a step in the right direction or is the whole steel section and rib design just a bad idea?


I love welding but I hate cutting and grinding steel, and accurately marking and drilling big holes in steel plates is not much fun either, so the laser or hi-def plasma approach just seemed more suitable. If I may ask why are so against the laser approach apart from the additional cost?


I'm glad you did not do everything in bold red as that might have pushed me over the edge an got me to build the whole damn thing from polystirene and cold glue


Thanks again for helping me to get this right!