Frank's new table

Renew! With new digs, comes new changes, and one is that Frank has been rebuilt into a heavy metal monster.

Renew! With new digs, comes new changes, and one is that Frank has been rebuilt into a heavy metal monster. Here's a rather drama-filled photo of me pondering what I've gotten myself into.

When we first got Frank, we made a wood table. This was a Bad Idea, but we didn't know any better. It worked, but there were many issues with having a table that's just not stiff enough. So with the move came a new metal table, one of our own design.

The last thing Frank did before getting taken apart for moving was cutting out the aluminum plates for his new table. Kind of poetic we felt. We wanted to give the new Frank table a 'modern googie' kind of feel, for it's a freakin' robot, it should look like the future. We've always been bummed that our CNC table didn't look that cool before, for when folks saw it for the first time it was always somewhat anticlimatic.

So the table is based upon C6x8.2 steel channel, custom cut 6160 aluminum plate, and a Bosch aluminum 40x160 extrusion. It's bolted down to the floor, very level, very square, and very stiff. Like everything else we do, we designed it out with Revit first, which was handy for its already got all the steel shapes in its library, so we only had to make families for the custom plates and the Bosch aluminum bit.

Next we're replacing the Sager laptop that we run Frank off of now with a custom-built Shuttle PC in an enclosure under the table, getting a spindle, and setting up a vacuum hold-down. But already just swapping to the metal table has made our cutting quality and speed go way up. Can't beat that!