Wes, my friend-
We are praying for your wife today and our thoughts and prayers are with you and your family-
Glenn

Hello,
I am very thankful for all of the kind words and the prayers, and wanted to let you know I have seen them and appreciate everyone's wonderful response. Christmas is not far away now and I wanted to wish all of you the best of holiday seasons! Also thanks to everyone at Vectric for creating such a great place for us to share and network our experiences and give something back to our fellow members.

Hello friends,
I did not tell many of my wife's battle with lung cancer last year and did not want to distract from the forum with my personal problems. I offer this information as an update to my past and present situation regarding my wife and hope I am not too far out of line by posting this here. I just thought it may help answer questions some may have, and perhaps it may help you with your relationships.
On January 15, 2012 I lost my loving wife of 42 years to a year long battle with lung cancer. She went through a lobectomy surgery in May 2011 which the surgeon proclaimed had left her 'cancer free' and without the need for chemotherapy or radiation treatments. Several months later she had a re-scan that showed cancer hot spots throughout her body and was given a stage 4 terminal cancer diagnosis. What a shock after being told she was 'cancer free' and I somehow feel like the 'ball was dropped' by the people we had entrusted with her care.
She was the driving force in our marriage and family and always managed to find a good perspective on life and pass her loving and caring touch on to everyone she came in contact with.
I also want to say "hold onto your loved ones, and keep them near to your heart.
Never take things for granted and try to do the things you want to do with them while they are near." I never thought my Mary would be taken from me and I even told her she was not going anywhere! I was so wrong about that and very possibly wrong about many other things, so please take the time to reconsider your point of view and realize that time is short and once your loved one is gone it is very final.
Give them that hug and kiss at every possible occasion. Share your loving thoughts openly with them so there will never be any doubt. I had so many things to say to my wife in those last moments, but could not get the words past my tears and crying, and did not want her to be worried about me. Say those things now, say them loud and clear or whisper them, but be sure to say them.
"I love you with all my heart Mary, and always will. Thanks for the wonderful life, family, and times we shared with each other. I will always hold your heart near to mine and cherish the memories and times you so generously shared with me"
Wes and Mary forever!
OK, I just needed to get some of those thoughts out of my head. Thanks for being such a great group of people to be involved with! I look forward to spending more of my time being involved on the Vectric forums soon, and hopefully I will get some of the threads I started further along and hopefully finished.

Hi Wes, I just hugged my wife and said a prayer for you and I'm not even religious. Looking forward to your continued posts. From a fellow foundryman keep up the good work. Dan

Wes,
I am sorry to hear of your wife's passing. I pray that the Lord blesses your life.

Scott

My sincerest condolences, my friend.

You obviously loved her very, very much and we will surely have you and your family in our thoughts and hearts.

All our best,
Dave

Wes,

Thank you for posting your loving message about your dear Mary. But it was really a message for all of us to take to heart.

God bless you,

Angie

Wes,

My heart goes out to you and my prayer will be that you and your Mary will someday be together again. It's so hard to know what to say to someone that has experienced such a great loss but know that there are so many of us around the world that you have touched with your thread and many of us will be reminding someone tonight just how important they are to us.

God bless you and your family in this sad time and thank you for posting and I will be looking forward to your future posts.

Mark

My thoughts and prayers are with you and your family.


Kent

Hello again,
Thanks again for all the wonderful replies and prayers from you all during this rough time for me. It is a good feeling to know that such caring and thoughtful bunch people make up the forum members here, and I truly appreciate all of your replies.
I have been waiting for a feeling that 'the time is right', to continue the build here and perhaps get back on track with any other threads I may have started but have not been able to achieve this kind of feeling. So, maybe I have to force myself into the frame of mind that pushes me in that direction.
This in mind I have been looking back over this build thread to find where I actually left off with it. I have made the prototype carriage casting that I had planned to use on the X and Y axis and I think it is going to work fine, but at this point since I acquired those large flat rails and carriages that I posted pictures of previously maybe I should take a closer look at if and how they can be mounted to the worktable and what it will take to utilize them for the X axis rails. I will see if I can get them into a mock assembly on the form for the worktable and figure out exactly how to mount them and what modifications need to be done to the gantry uprights to use these carriages instead of the cast aluminum ones.
These rails are pretty heavy duty(they came off of a large Trumpf laser that was scrapped not too long ago) and should provide a sturdy rail for the gantry to follow. They are a bit 'bulky' and somewhat larger than my design for the aluminum carriages would have been, but definitely will be a strong alternative.
I also need to get the rack size identified and begin the search for some mating pinions to go with them so I can get to work on laying out the rack and pinion setup for the X also. You can see the rollers on the blue carriage with wire brushes at the ends to sweep the rails, along with some rack sections and other misc. parts.

Hello,
I have been kind of busy with personal matters here and I have had a couple of side jobs that took what little bit of extra time I had to do so this thread has still been at a stand still. I put a little time into the build tonight with the steel rails and the carriage that came from a large Trumpf laser. The carriage has a thin gauge steel dust cover that had been damaged when removed from the machine so I had to repair it. I got the dimensions for the bolt pattern on the side of the carriage so I can get them transferred to the gantry upright members and modify the design so they will fit. The steel rails are about 78" long and are heavy duty at .75" thick by 2.312" wide. The roller wheels fit on the top of the rail and have short flanges that fit about 1/8" over the side of the rail. There is a brass brush mounted at each end of the carriage to help keep the rails clean and they look like they will serve the purpose well. Not a lot to post but I did get some pictures of the steel rail and the carriage.

Hello,
I've spent a little time working on the drawings for the gantry and adding the trumpf carriages to them. It is still very rough and will need some more work but I think I have the gantry uprights modified and ready. I have done some work with the design of the rack and pinion and how I will implement it, but that is only pencil sketches and I have not finalized my ideas for that yet. I am posting a snip of the gantry parts to give an idea how it will go together with the newly acquired carriage and rails.

Wes,
Lookin' Good!
Glenn

Hello Glenn,
Thanks for posting to the thread, and perhaps with a little more effort I will find a way to get at least something done each week. I feel bad about not having completed more with this build than I have.
I'm having some trouble keeping motivated and also finding time and enough space to do much with this build. I have been fortunate to obtain some side work for the CNC and have not had much free time to devote to the machine build between trumpet/trombone mouthpieces and other items coming off the CNC. My garage-work area is a bit over crowded currently and perhaps soon I will have more space and time to work on the mid sized build. As a side note the small CNC router I built for my youngest son is now residing here in my garage too so I will have more alternatives for making parts that would not fit well in my CNC mill.
I have had some thoughts of laminating the gantry uprights from wood and aluminum sheet stock(say .125" thick alum).
This idea has come up on the CNCZone and I think it does have some merits. Right now I don't think I can manage the cost of the originally planned aluminum plate, but I may be able to get some .125" thick sheet cut and laminated to say some birch plywood and I think that could very possibly be plenty sturdy for a long while until I can afford some aluminum plate. I naturally will try to utilize some decent design ideas to strengthen the uprights a bit further like gusseting and perhaps adding 90º bent flanges on the vertical sides. If anyone has some comments or suggestions about this laminating idea I would really appreciate reading them? I will try and be more diligent with my build thread.

Hello again,
Well I finally got around to pouring the concrete in the worktable form today with my youngest sons help. It has been sitting waiting for the next step for so long I almost forgot exactly where I left off with it. It took just a little over 4.5 80lbs bags of concrete mix to fill the form so I imagine it will be somewhat over 360 lbs total weight for the combined worktable(probably close to 380 lbs with the steel angle iron and threaded rod figured in). It did not take us much more than 45 minutes to mix and pour the form including me tamping the mix into all the corners and under the threaded rod while Mike mixed the next 2 bag load. It does not look like much and I did not spend any time trying to finish the visible surface as this will be the bottom of the worktable and the top surface will be revealed after it cures and we flip it over. I forgot to mention I bought some fibers to strengthen the high strength concrete even more and the fibers could be seen in the mix as I moved it around with a trowel(looked like hairs in the mix).
When we flip it I will remove the plate that is on the current bottom and place it on the actual bottom before we set it back up on the frame platform. I am not sure how this will all come out but I figure if there are any voids in the actual top concrete surface I can fill them in with epoxy but the angle iron slats are planned to be at surface level and I will shim them up with some aluminum stock and then use the machine to cut them true prior to attaching a sacrificial work plate. I plan to have both a wooden and an aluminum sacrificial plates but I figured it would not be hard to surface the aluminum shims as opposed to trying to have a perfectly flat concrete surface. Like I said time will tell if my thinking is good or less desirable. This is definitely a fairly easy way to get a solid, strong worktable/base and cost wise it is probably cheaper and easier for most people and there are no other factors like are involved with welding a steel frame etc. I hesitate to even post a picture because it is really pretty ugly but I'm hoping the top will be much better. Now if I can keep motivated maybe this build will be finished one of these days(years!!)