Steel Frame 8' x 5' CNC - Advice Sought

[routercnc]

Hi Brenton,

As the table looks like its coming together I'll make a few comments on the gantry in post #1. If you simple space the Y axis rails further apart so that they mount nearer the corner you'll get a big stiffness increase. At the moment they are part way along the flexible face of the RHS. Also helps as bit with racking of the Y axis due to the wider spacing of the bearings.

When I've sketched out that type of layout I've aligned the upper & lower faces of the carraige with the top & bottom surfaces of the RHS, which puts the rails slightly inboard so that the fixing bolts don't hit the top or bottom surface.

You also talked about inserting an 'I' beam and chopping back to get clearance for a ballscrew between the rails. I can see where you are coming from but its alot of work. I remember some commercial machines welding a solid spacer under where the rails will sit (full length of gantry, wider than the rails, and say 6 - 8mm deep to suit) to give clearance to the ballscrew. Probably would need the seating face grinding true to recover any distortion from the welding prior to seating the rails. Although it's an offset from the gantry, some of the small loss of stiffness would be recovered by the spacers. Just another option that is relatively simple to implement.

The diagonal plate inside the RHS would be difficult to attach wouldn't it? Unless you are cutting periodic holes in the RHS to tack weld through.