I have yet to see a full aluminum extrusion table so I thought I’d post mine here in case anyone had any questions or would like to add to the topic. I tried the waste board option but was just not smitten with the result. This option allows me to add a waste board for flimsy materials if needed or just clamp sturdier material in air above my table for thru cuts.
I love those riser/clamping blocks! Nicely done!
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Very nice. With my luck, I would carve into the aluminum and that’s not what I would want to do.
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Wow, that looks awesome! I’m in my shop staring at a sheet of 3/4" 4x8 MDF that’s warped like a taco… If you don’t mind me asking, what’s a setup like that cost for all hose aluminum parts and pieces, including your table surface?
You clearly have got it together, love the approach. I would hesitate as a newbie. I also love the artwork in the background,you have skills kudos
Is that the Misumi 250mm bed?
I have 2 pieces1200x250mm Misumi that I’m planning to used with MDF wasteboard in the center. I’m still trying to decide if I want to build the aluminum table or the foldable table I design.
I’m also thinking if I should just go for all aluminum since I have extra 2 pieces of 1200x250 bed. I just need to order one more (needed 5).
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Haha, I’d probably do the same thing at some point which is why I lifted the Z gantry so that it doesn’t touch the aluminum table and added the clamping blocks.
The total for the aluminum frame, table top, wire duct, and clamps was somewhere around $2000 US. I’m sure this could be done for less I just had some very specific parameters my table had to meet including portability. Part of the cost was also having the drilling, tapping, boring, and other machining operations for the aluminum extrusion done for me and all the fasteners that went with it. Basically I designed the table, gave the parameters to a t-slots company, and they gave me back a kit that I then assemble in a matter of about 20 minutes.
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lol, I wish I could take the credit for the artwork but that one is my wife’s.
Yes, it is the Misumi 250mm bed! But I had mine cut to 885mm to fit the table width. I thought about going longwise but my design meant the under support had a longwise orientation as can be seen in this photo.
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Aha! That makes sense. I look forward to seeing your build!
This is what I’m looking to achieve.
I’m doing a research for adding linear actuator but not really necessary.
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Food for thought if you haven’t already thought about it. You might be able to get away with using a couple of linear slide bearing for bar movement if you change the direction of your slide from vertical to horizontal. It would mean having to pull your bar off your table assembly to get your table to pivot and then place the bar back on but it should be pretty minimal effort. Your table looks like it’s already setup to do that with minimal design changes.
Here’s a video:
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I was not at all aware of this type of table.
Could you share links to the products you’ve used and the process? How do you attach the CNC to the rails?
MiSUMi sells some 250mm wide extrusions and at 1200mm long this is the link.
To make a full table top you would need 5 pieces. To secure the CNC to the extrusion you would just use some t-nuts. There are quite a few types depending on your extrusion slots and application but it would be something like this…
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Thanks Tom.
I’m trying to picture in my mind how that works. I image that you would place the 5 rails side by side to create a surface of 1250x1250.
How do you attach the rails to each other?
In the photos from Abraxas, I see cross-rails and I don’t understand how they are fastened to the large extrusions: if you put 2 rails one on top of another, there’s no way to pass the t-nuts or is there?
It can be a bit tricky working with this stuff, but you can either pre-load the t-nuts into the top extrusion, or pre-assemble the t-nuts onto the lower extrusion.
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If I understand your question, I believe there are holes predrilled all the way through the bottom extrusion, then long bolts to attach to the T-nuts located in the top extrusions. When I was researching these products earlier, I found that some suppliers also offered ‘thick-walled’ versions of some profiles. I have no experience with these, but having a thicker extrusion in some parts of a design might help with rigidity, if that is ever a concern.
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Hi Ben,
I went through three companies to make my table.
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Misumi: The only two items I bought from them were the flat table top (HFSQN4-15250) at a 885mm length and the nuts that go into the bottom (HNTT5-5)
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McMaster Carr: I ordered the screws and washers that would attach the HFSQN4-15250 extrusion to my frame.
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T-Slots was the extrusion company I used to create the frame (Extrusion and bolts). You can find their catalog here. I used their metric series 40 extruded aluminum.
Most of my joints were thru hole with counter bore and the nice thing about t-slots is that they have a machining service that will do it for you if you call out your hole locations and the type of hole you want. Their machining service can also be found in the T-Slot catalog. If you want to find out more about the different types of joints they have you can see their video below. Hope this helps!
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