Will this Router / Mill work?

[upside]

I am planning on building a router that will work as a milling machine. Will this work or is it hot strong enough? So here's what I have, I made the table out of 3x3x1/8 steel and I am thinking of making the gantry out of the same. It is 50" wide and 24" deep but the side rails are 30" so it can travel 24"

I don't know if you guys ever seen Dave Gingery's books on building "a home shop from scrap" (I'm sure some of you must have!) but that is what I am basing the design for my rails on.

I am adding a picture and zipped dxf file of a rough drawing I did in Rhino but I just downloaded that a couple days ago so I'm not very good yet, but you can get the basic idea. I ended up using a few of my 25 save so I could show you guys! I am using 3/8x3 cold rolled for the rails on the x even though my drawing shows 1/4" The t-slots are going to be made out of 1/4" cold rolled and aluminum(I know, it's going to be a beast!)

I was thinking of making the z axis out of 2x2 steel and making it so I could raise and lower the whole tube with a hand crank and having the head move up and down on the tube via cnc.

I was planing on using timing belts to drive the x and y.

So, what do you guys think? Is it posible? Not strong enough? To heavy? Let me know all the hundereds of reasons why it won't work. Thanks guys.

[upside]

What size steppers or servos would it take to drive this thing? I am thinking I will put one on each side of the x axis.

[FandZ]

It looks promising. And I don't think there is such a thing as too heavy of a CNC. How much do you think your Y axis and Z axis will end up weighing?

I'd keep working on your design, you are headed in the right direction.

[upside]

Thanks. What I meant was would it be to difficult for the motors to push around? It will probably be a couple hundred lbs and I realized I did not really state it clearly but I am not planing on putting any rollers on it, it just slides on the rails. That is for a couple reasons, first because I am broke and can't afford it and second is because I am not sure they would be strong enough to mill steel.

What I mean by it being a mill is that I want to be able to use it just like a horizontal milling machine or vertical. After the machine is done I am going to make a angle table to hold the work, again designed after Gingery's mill only bigger. The head is going to be made like the taig mill and I will probably get a taig motor for it, I will be able to turn it sideways for horizontal milling.

Would it be better to go with steppers or servos for this? I would like to get 500ipm but be able to go really slow for milling. I read that steppers lose power the faster they go which would be ok because I would slow it down for heavier milling. Would two 640oz steppers work for the gantry? I would like to get by as cheap as possible.

[upside]

I am also wondering how to get the rails perfectly level with each other so I don't get a warp in everything I mill? I don't have a flat object that large to go off of. I suppose a level would do since anything i mill that's that big will be flat anyway. And one more thing I was wondering is how you square up the gantry on a 4ft wide machine?