Time for a Reality Check and encouragement to New builders.!

[Neale]

If all you want to do is build a good, functional, CNC router, then I absolutely agree with you, Jazz. For example, despite the fact that the usual minimum steel section that people seem to use is 60x60x5 - minimum! - my machine is built from 50x50x3, and it seems plenty strong enough to me. There does seem to be a lot of over-building going on. Maybe I'll be proved wrong later...

As I mentioned in the "epoxy levelling" thread I started, my welded steel frame, with its 1.5mm or so dip in the X rails, would be perfectly usable after one coat of levelling epoxy. No question, and I've said as much in that thread. One of the reasons I have spent time measuring is just to verify that. However, I'm retired, I'm not doing this to make money, and at various times I've described myself as an engineer, a mathematician, and a scientist. Wearing my engineer's hat ("an engineer is someone who can do for five bob what any damn fool can do for a pound") I'm right beside you. Swapping to mathematician/scientist, though, I can't help asking "How? Why? What?" In other words - that looks interesting, I wonder if...? We can apply scientific method to building CNC routers, or at least aspects of their design and construction, and maybe something useful will pop out. Or maybe it won't. Is it useful to suggest, based on what I see at present, that two thin layers of epoxy might be better than one thick one? But that one will be good enough for most practical purposes anyway? You are also quite correct that I don't know exactly how accurate my measurements are, although in the best scientific tradition I've described how I made them, and also tried to double-check the method. Is that better than proceeding in ignorance? My father was always saying, "You do it like that because that's how I've always done it." I've always had a problem with that attitude...

I'm also quite convinced that nothing I can say will change the views of anyone else anyway, but in a nice, quiet, corner of the forum us airy-fairy types can argue pointlessly amongst ourselves without disturbing the real workers

BTW, I also do listen to other opinions, if they're backed up by reasonable evidence or results. That's why I have a CSMIO/IP-M and three EM806 on order for the new machine to replace the vanilla BOB and analogue drivers I was going to salvage from my old MDF-built router. I wouldn't even bother measuring accuracy on that machine - by the time you've pulled the tape measure to the end of the bed, the starting point has moved...
Oh, and there's a big smiley face to cover this whole post - I just can't find one big enough! I am very grateful to all who have posted here in the last couple of years and from whom I've learnt a lot.