T rows table

Hello. I'm not a mechanic so forgive me my question :) I need to buy or make a work table for cnc machine. The table needs to have T rows to easy attach a material and it has to be 2 x 2m. Is there any standard about dimensions of this rows? Where can I buy, or how can I make such table in easy and cheap way?

Thanks

You're kidding, right?

TWO METERS square?

And cheap?

The bad news: In order to withstand the forces involved in machining, and the forces exerted by typical t-slot clamps, and to support the workpiece without substantial deflection of its own, the table must be thick, and therefore heavy, and therefore expensive, just because there's so much material in it. If you want a reasonably flat surface, that will cost more..

The good news: At that size, it's a custom part anyway, so you can get whatever slots you want.

Okay, there is a way to make a large table light and cheap, assuming you're machining plastic foam with a router or something similar.: Make the table out of plywood, and just drive in nails or screws to hold your workpiece.

-Mike-

Thanks for answer Mike.

But what do you think about this. To use thiner (therefore cheaper :-) ) table, and to support it from below by aluminium profiles. Profiles are cheap and light because they are empty inside and I can use how many I want without big costs rising. The ideal solution would be not a T-row table in one peace but profiles with T rows to build table of any size. I've found a company ITEM producing such profiles but they are extremely expensive. Do you have any other ideas? I was thinking also about building support from alu profiles, building table from pieces of wood or other soft and light material and putting steel Z profiles on their edges to create a T rows. What do you think about?

U¿ytkownik Mike Halloran w wiadomo¶ci do grup dyskusyjnych napisa³: snipped-for-privacy@mb-m04.aol.com...

I don't know about the ITEM brand. I have used slotted extrusions from 80/20 and found them satisfactory. They have complete systems in several modules in both metric and american dimensions. Pick one or the other; you will go nuts if you end up with a mixed inventory.

Beware of generic aluminum profiles. The extrusion industry standard allowable tolerances for camber and twist are huge.

Your specification is still incomplete; you haven't revealed whether the table is stationary or must travel, what loads are applied by the weight of the workpiece and by the operations being performed on the workpiece, or how much table deflection is allowable when said loads are applied, the positioning accuracy and resolution required of the cnc controller, the trajectory error allowed of the moving parts, and more.

If you 'support the table from below', what supports the supports?

Yes, you could make a grid of t-slotted bars, modular if you like. You need a leveled surface to set the supports on, or a way to level the bars when you place them.

How much time can you allow to set up a given workpiece? How long does the operation take? How many workpieces will you make? In what time period?

Of course, there's always the 'zero-mass' solution: Drop the workpiece on the floor in a pool of molten wax, wait for the wax to harden, and work on it where it is. Given the right cnc controller, you wouldn't even need a level floor; you could just touch off three points on the blank and call that a reference plane.

That's just an example; I can come up with more, and more bizarre, ideas, but you'll need to reveal just a bit more about what, exactly, you're trying to do.

And how much money you've got. Then we'll have a good laugh, and work from there.

-Mike-