I bought a chinese made machine a few years ago, and the gantry and vertical supports were just bolted together tube sections. It worked well enough to start me off, but i quickly found that it wasnt up to what I wanted to do with it.
I ended up stripping the partially supported round linear rails, and replacing them all with the good stuff. Still planning on doing a scratch build, but I wanted to have this upgraded before hand so I can use it to make the aluminum parts for the new machine.
Designed the new base plates and vertical supports in fusion 360, had them laser cut locally. new gantry is a 2x6x3/16" HSST, with a 1 meter fasttobuy "sliding table" assembly and same for the new Z axis. if anybody is interested in the before pictures I can post some.

Next up is making the new work bed (starting that today) and then replacing the steppers with the nema 34 DDM servo set I picked up for the new machine, along with replacing the two X axis ball screws with 2005's with proper bearing blocks at each end. these dont have that, just a tiny little bearing held on with friction at each end.



Similar Threads: