Ben's Build Thread

Everything is finally printed.

Starting to slowly assemble as I get a few minutes here and there.

Building a table that has a 28" x 28" top for behind my desk. This will be for 3D printing or lasing. When I want to cut, Ill need to bring it to the garage, or even move it onto a larger table. My first cuts will involve moving it to one large enough to cut 3.5’ centerboard for the sailboat I’m building.

As I was building the table, it started turning out pretty nice, and I decided to make a real top out of Douglas Fir. I’m not sure how this is going to work, but I guess Ill screw the MPCNC down to it, and then have another build surface on top of that. Any ideas would be much appreciated. Here are some shots of the table:

Holy sh%t, winner for the nicest table! No doubt that boat will be amazing as well.

Thanks, It’s nice, as a table goes, but not sure how well it will work for the MPCNC. I couldn’t resist putting a real top on it. Although I’m not afraid to put some holes in it if I have to. Right now thinking of mounting the feet directly to it, and then having spoil board on top of the tabletop. Possibly clamping the spoil board, or mounting with a few screws. This will sacrifice some Z height tho.

Another option is to build a wood frame (almost like a picture frame) that the MPCNC is screwed to. Then the spoil board can be placed in the middle of the frame and can be easily replaced. No Z height lost and you could secure the spoil board with a similar mechanism (a block on a pivot point) as a picture frame uses.

Currently, if I remove the tabletop there is a 2x2’ piece of MDF under it that I was going to screw down to. It is inset, having the legs and sides of the table around it. It looked a bit strange for how nice the rest of the table was. Then I started calculating working areas and realized that if I put a top on the table, it would both look nicer, and increase the build size by 4" each direction. I didn’t really consider the frame idea.

Now I have this nice top I’ve spent all this time making, but will lose some Z on. Don’t really want to hack a big hole for MDF into it, although that would be for the best, functionally speaking.

Dont have time to do the whole thing before work, but this is the basic idea. The center is the spoil board and the outer is the frame. Then the whole thing can be screwed or clamped to your table with minimal damage to the table itself.

Another thing is that you could take the whole MPCNC off of the table and move it to the garage temporarily for cutting fairly easily.

It’s your machine, and everything is up to you. Just sharing an idea.

Yup. That’s what I should have done. Still Could. Although I am getting kind of attached to the top I made already.

The whole idea is that you still can while also protecting your nice table top. I’m sure there is a better way to do this too. I’m just stuck on it because that is what I did before building a whole table for my machine. I just used free plywood as the top though.

Sorry for the bad looking assembly. I just randomly selected materials to make the spoil board stand out against the frame.

Ahh, now I follow you. So basically I would end up with a double top. I like it. Ill probably do some variation of this idea.

Just went and picked up EMT. Plus I’m at work and we have a cold cutting saw here. Getting close now.

Yep, I did something similar and just set the whole thing on an old card table until I had time to build a good table for it.

A cold cut saw seems kinda overkill, but I guess I did use a giant horizontal band saw for my conduit. I’m gonna miss having access to that saw.