Originally Posted by
Enk1du
I'm planning a build using 8020 and a bunch of cncrouterparts.com parts. I want to use the gantry risers that Ahren sells, but I'm not sure what size of extrusion to use for the gantry rail.
The space between the risers is about 44", and I had originally planned to use 3030. According to the "tech toolkit" application from 80/20 the deflection of a 3030 beam from a 100lb point-load at the center of the beam is all of about 0.002" (for a distributed load its 0.001") which seems perfectly acceptable for me given that there is the added stiffness of a 1/4" thick, 4" tall piece of CRS and also I don't think my z axis and everything will weigh anything like 100lbs (current plan is to use the dewalt dwp611 router). However, there is also the issue of torsion applied to the beam due to the cantilevered z axis, and the "tech toolkit" doesn't compute deflections for torsional loads.
I'd prefer to stay with 3030 for the rail given the added expense of the larger extrusion and all the other larger parts it would require, but at the same time I don't want to buy something inadequate only to need to upgrade later.
Does anyone have any thoughts or experiences to share to help me decide? Thanks!