And so it begins

[corrie]

Na no lime light for this boy ,I didn,t build this one,bought it .It,s you who deserves the light .What type of leadscrews are you going to use?Also what are your bearings ,they look like hywin,s.

[Xerxes]

Graham, that machine looks almost exactly the one I was planning as my second router! Seems to be very rigid design.

However I ended up doing my router in different way due to expensive linear guides (see my homepage if interested).

[Graham S]

Corrie, see my first post but when I say z I mean x. I.e they are THK rails.

Xerxes, nice little machine. Stiffness does not just come from the bearings though. If you support something over only a short area then it is more likely to flex away from the support. That is another reason the bearings tend to be used in pairs. In your case it seems to have turned out fine.

Graham

[Graham S]

I thought I should post that my router bed ended up being scrapped. The workshop in which I was building it had to be emptied and it was too heavy to get into my attic (via the spiral stairs) it also turned out less flat than I had hoped so the weight was not worth it. I'm moving house later in the year if all goes to plan, hoping to get more shop space then, I'll build a new bed with just t-slot extrusion and some cast tooling plate then let it true itself up.

Graham

[ZipSnipe]

I liked that bed it looked good. Looks like the way you put that bed together would also make an awesome bench top. Was that all welded?

[Graham S]

It was, the problem is basically that to prevent severe warping during the welding the steel used would need to be thicker, I struggled to lift it as it is so that wasn't an option for me. I got it normalized and machined the top flat on a huge mill but clamping was difficult and it was not quite as flat as I would have liked. Bearing in mind I wanted the router to be be very accurate for mill type operations. Its all good experience.

Graham