Gantry or table?

[skaha]

While I am familiar with mills and lathes, I am totally new to cnc. My question is what are the pros and cons of either a gantry or a moving table, I am currently building the plans by Bigbear cnc, it has a moving table.
Thanks for any insight you can provide.

[DDM]

Moving table is going to be more rigid vs a gantry that is going have a larger workable area for the size of the foot print. A lot of routers go with gantry because a 4x8 sheet on a moving table would take up too much room. But the gantry isn't going to be capable of working harder metals due to not being rigid enough. Hope this helps

Carl

[skaha]

Thanks Carl, thats the info I needed.
Terry

[ViperTX]

*chuckle*......well a gantry can be every bit as rigid as a moving table......look at the top of the line cnc routers.....they are mostly all gantry type.....as what you are machining gets heavier the gantry is the way to go....CNC mills are the only moving table devices that I can think off and their envelope is generally pretty small.....can you imagine an 800 lb piece of metal sitting on a CNC mill's table and moving at 200 or more inches per minute......pretty scarry....

[nwrepair1]

ViperTX. Look at the BigBear cnc sight. It's a desktop sized machine made out of some type of PLASTIC. Gantry, frame and table are all plastic. the best thing we could recommend to him is replace as much plastic with aluminium. With all that plastic, everthing is going to swell when the weather is damp or swell or shrink with changes in room temperature.

[project5k]

time laps photo that... it'll look like the machine is breathing...