Hello, Folks, What am I missing? I see the care, technology, enthusiasm, and COST related to “builds”. Great care is taken to be precise and produce a high-tolerance machine. Then I see that the builders use a sheet of plywood on sawhorses as a platform for his/her precision machine. Seems like it defeats the whole purpose and a waste of hard earned work, technology and money. To me, if one is going to build such an “instrument”, shouldn’t more consideration be given to the support structure? Regards, Tom
It usually is. Sometimes, the second time around. People are so wrapped up in building their machine, that things like the work table gets neglected. However, when they see the problems caused by insufficient support, they normally get around to correcting the problem. But, most often, it's not something the builders feel the need to tell us about. Although there have some great designed tables shown on the Forum.
My design for this summer will sit my CNC on 3" rubber decoupler on a 2" thick concrete tabletop (don't know yet for the legs )
I built a very robust torsion box table top last weekend and plan to weld up a steel frame for it and the cnc to sit on. But first I need to work to the problem of getting my gantry beam ends square. I thought my chop saw was square when I cut the pieces.
Giarc. I think from practice, the best way to create a square end to your ali is to, cut it approximately the right length, (2 or 3mm grace) and then to clamp a straight edge, absolutely square, and use a router to skim it off to a line.
Thanks. I was able to get my chop saw square. The router was my next option. I am tempted to make a cut off jig for the router like Rick posted with my left over v-slot scraps.
I couldn't agree more Tom! The table or frame is commonly over looked and not considered until it's realized as the weakness. I think Gray is right in that builders get wrapped up in the machine. It alone can be overwhelming. When you include the electronics and software side of the deal it's easy to see how the base can be overlooked. With that said, it's not something that will kill the project. Usually, a base can be built and installed later on. I picked up the 2x4 basics molded legs on sale from the net. 2 x 4 basics - Google Search Followed the instructions, added the diagonal member, and used a nice 5ply top. It's a very sturdy. For the extra 15 bucks over using 4x4s for legs it took out the extra labor and all of the guesswork to get it level. I'd do it again. Joe
