A quick idea for stronger x-axis gantry. What tell the public about using two c-beam and hanging the router/spend between? The design would cost more, as well as taking up more space. However the design could potentially create a significantly strong and rigid x gantry. Allowing for better z-axis strength, and sturdier spindle/router mount. I have not seen a design on the form, but I could be mistaken. -Cheers!
Here is a concept I worked up a while back that may offer you a bit of help moving forward with this. It balances both the X and Z supports and actually doesn't lose all that much cutting area.
None specific. There have been a few other similar concepts that have popped up but I don't recall any of them have gone very far.
I was toying with a similar idea for my current build. But I ended up discarding it as overkill since I will be cutting plastic exclusively. If I make a router for aluminum or hardwood, I will definitely want to build something like @Rick 2.0 shows. That looks far more solid than anything else I have seen here. Probably close to the most rugged you can get without going to steel construction.
I was toying with the idea of developing a variant specifically for aluminum (which is where the double gantry comes in). Small Rigid and Precise. But the price keeps going up... I needed custom brackets for a new 3D printer. And you just need one more machine to make the new machine...
I'm familiar with this design on precision measuring machines (CMMs). My sSluggestion is utilize one beam as the Master beam and the other as a Slave beam. The Master would fully guide the carriage and the Slave to only support the downward force. The guides between the Master and Slave must have very good parallel components.
What do you mean? Have the master be fully locked down to the rail, while the 'slave' only have wheels that rest on the top?
I'm new to the terminology but I'm thinking 'rail' and 'beam' are the same. It appears to me in the picture the Z carriage would have at least 2 guide rails or 2 bearing plates one on either side of the carriage. If either one of the bearing systems is not closely parallel there may be a problem. My comment was more to the effect of being able to distribute the weight of the carriage over the two rails but I would see that the two rails would need to be parallel in the XZ plane and the YZ plane.
The wonders of openBuild. Where the beam has an integrated rail. I am never quite sure about terminologies, but I think both are the same here. I don't personally own any v-slot or c-beam. So I do not know the flex, but It could be quite difficult to get them exactly parallel. I had not really thought of that complication. -Cheers
Yes. The rails are built into the beams. I tend to think of them as rails or beams depending on how I'm using them at the time. So I think the way to do this is to have V-Wheels on gantries on both sides. You would probably only need one side to have a lead screw and motor, but they would both act as linear guides. The good thing (and bad thing) about using V-Wheels is that they are little plastic wheels. So they have more flex than metal wheels. Which means that getting the two beams parallel enough to work is reasonably easy. Have the two beams only loosely attached, move the gantries to one end, tighten that end, move them to the other, tighten that end. Now you should have a reasonable straight line. You also want to make sure that they are square with regard to the Y-axis and bed. Like I say, my current design involves cutting softer material (plastic), so support on both sides seemed like overkill. But if I notice any issues where it is not stiff enough, I will be ordering another C-Beam and modifying it to work like this. -D
Thanks for that information. Yes, having some flex in the wheels sounds doable for the dual beam (pun).
