Mike, thanks for the confirmation on the rails.
Hi Arvid,
Thanks for the real-world aluminum test
Just curious: I was thinking in terms of a 12" supported
span of 0.500" aluminum - not one end secured and the other left free. So to be sure, if you lay your 12" piece of aluminum plate across two support members, and then press down in the middle of the plate, do you see any significant flex?
The design I'm thinking about uses an integrated aluminum "I-beam" as the span structure for the y-axis gantry. I threw a couple of triangles in, too, for luck
I'm attaching a couple of pics. In the second, you'll see the purple "I-beam". As you can see, the gantry is offset along the x-axis. I chose this design because I was striving to keep the z-axis vertical force centered within the footprint of the x-axis gantry. So, the z-axis is sort of "tucked in" to the gantry, and lined up nicely with that leading pair of x-axis linear carriages.
This also minimises the x-axis rail that is wasted due to the footprint of the gantry, at the same time allowing the rail carriages to be spread apart as much as possible.
Do you see anything about this box that says I can't get away with using 0.50" (13mm) 6061 al? The box is 51" (130cm) long, and 7" (18cm) tall.