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

[mitchejc]

Jazz, I totally agree with what you are saying. I got on here a few months back with the intention to build a small very sturdy router from alu and after calculating the cost and seeing the nice solid steel builds and not fully understanding remarks like "use larger profile" and "extra weight might be a good", things got out of hand... You over design one bit and then you strengthen something else to be in line with that and before you know it your are caught up in a viscous cycle of adding more strength and weight. The other issue is that parts are MUCH larger in real life than the CAD drawing suggested but at that point its a bit too late. I did not see this coming but to give you a good example, I had to fit a hook to the roof trusses and buy a chain block just to get my gantry on an off my machine while I'm building it, so how wrong is that for a little DIY router. Well, for me there's no turning back now and it will be finished like that and maybe I can do a future version 2 in a more sensible manner.

I wish someone could get hold of a drawing of the Datron M8 gantry and post that on here as a reference of what the ultimate steel gantry looks like. I bet you one does not need a chain block to lift that gantry.

I think classifying the build threads into 4 classes: Wood, Alu, Steel and OTT Wackjob is a good suggestion.