Stiffening the gantry

[KarenW]

The start of a small list of improvements we'll be doing to the Pro Plus over the next couple of months so the question is about the back panel of the gantry.
Who has added to or replaced this piece? Will a .5" thick aluminum plate be overkill? Can the rails handle the added weight?
After this we'll be replacing the blue table with 8020 extrusions but we want to get this accomplished first.
Yays or nays?

[Kevink18]

So far I have replaced one of the liner rod plastic supports with a aluminum one I built I am going to do the other one to it has helped the flex in the back plate alot.

[rungemach]

Hello Karen

the back gantry plate of the pro and pro plus is not the major issue with stiffness in that design. It is the unsupported bearing bars.
There is a conversion that you can do to install fully supported bearing bars, but it is a project of medium difficulty. IMHO the x axis (gantry axis) is the most important to do first.

In that conversion, the back plastic plate ends up being reinforced by the new bearing bars and with two aluminum rectangular bars that all bolt together to form a very rigid assembly. more info is here.

http://www.cncsharktalk.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1342

[KarenW]

After reading that thread several times I think we're going a different way. I'm just not interested in doing a total tear-down and rebuild at this point but thanks for the thread -- it was a great read and kept us up late last night.