One of the things we were talking about shop wise, was adapting the cabinets under some of the machines to better store the bits and bobs associated with them.
I took some measurements, and if an under platform is added to the cnc router, then there is enough space to store the entire pile now in overhead storage under the machine.
Okay, sounds like welding: Noted… but, this seems an elegant solution to the stored plywood question to me. It would take either making an add on platform of wood, or fabricating cross braces to match the new contour on the bottom, then longitudinal beams to support the weight. Is this bad for the bed? Maybe the extra material will help with rigidity, and also dampen vibration. Larger sturdier casters might be needed also.
I think this would take some of the drawback of the large footprint away from the machine, and solve a bit of space issues.
Not a structural engineer, but here are my thoughts…
Guessing we are talking about “raw material” storage, not “work in progress” storage:
Under-table storage sounds like a good a idea, but adds extra weight added to the CNC structure, if it needs to be moved around.
Extra braces might make it stiffer, but the constant loading and unloading might continually flex the machine and compromise it’s “squareness”.
It would be really clumsy (i.e., causing much banging of material against the CNC table supports, again compromising “squareness”)
trying to get the 4’x8’ plywood/MDF/etc. past the reinforcing angles at the base of each of the legs, probably tripping the E-Stop cable each time.
Flat-stacked plywood is heavy to access and remove, unless you only want the top piece. (so, supply only 1 thickness of 1 material?)
Right-sided (’+X") access to two small (< 4’x4’ ) shelving units might work.
These problem might be moot if one is trying only to slide stuff in and out UNDER the bottom stretchers, but then the height of the stack would max out at about 4-6".
So, pull 4x8’s out from UNDER the “0 Y” stretcher, and smaller pieces from a couple of separate storage structures out from ABOVE stretchers & angle braces on the “+X” side.
But this all assumes that there is enough space to easily access the area under the CNC table
once the woodshop tools and the CNC machine are finally placed in the woodshop layout.
I think at least two of the CNC machine’s side will be accessible to the ShopVac only, once
everything is rearranged.
Yes, it will probably take a committee to work out all the details. But the footprint can be worked on to reclaim some of the usable area.
The raw deal is that space is past becoming an argument, and festering arguments are really bad for organizations. If the workstations can be made more space efficient, then the space pressure lessens. Lots of really smart people about. It’s really just an extension of the cnc design and build. The machine also needs to do P, D, and Q… When I think of makerspaces, this is what I think of. A group project. Okay, take some pics, make some drawings, throw it on the wiki. Sure, there are dozens of cnc build pages out there. How many “Optimizing your cnc router for plywood storage” pages are there
