Thoughts about increasing Rigidity

So I was thinking about how we could increase rigidity with drastically increasing cost of the machine, and saying with the mostly printed theme. I thought of the one guy that had a large scale machine and added a second bar in the x and y axis to the gantry. That method wasted a lot of cutting area. Then I thought of the X axis on prusa printers… So what if we added and extra rail to the exterior x and y axis as well as the the gantry? Attached is a quick mock up of what I mean. I names it MPCNCHD lol

The only increase in costs would basically be double the cost for conduit which is on the cheap. Some extra filament and probably twice the number of bearings. I could see the cost increase for a 5’ square machine being $50 or plus an extra roll of filament of choice.

Spacing between the rails would probably need to increase as compared to my picture to accommodate the bearings and enough material to make it strong.

I like the idea, the bad part with increasing the moving mass though is even slower accelerations would be needed. Not that this wouldn’t work, just the first drawback I see. If you support the outer rails you could do away with the double rails out there and just do doubles across the gantry. So I think the best way to pull this off is basically build a box attach the outer rails on it (fully sported), the do your gantry.

Have a look at the updates forum and the V2 thread there are a ton of good Ideas in there. I am happy with the size and rigidity now, especially after adding the stainless steel rails! The only reason I could see doing this would be for a full sheet router…kinda cool!

Keep the ideas flowing I am finally catching up with everything here after the move so I will love to start a new project soon.