I kept asking myself, what if I put the entire XY setup on the halo and use a Y spar. So I wanted to see what it looks like before I moved on.
The quick option of adding a spar and putting the rails on top of the halo resulted in an elevated height for the belt, due to the stackup of the linear rails.
The belts being elevated moves the motors an pulleys way above the halo. Not ideal.
So then I try to do an under/over on the halo, putting the linear rails underneath, but the challenge is keeping the traveling pulleys up top. To do that, I'd have to push the linear rails out, about 15mm, which makes the machine 30mm wider. Alternatively, I could move the stepper motors inward, but that reduces the Y travel.
There is no clear, clean solution here. Something has to give to pull this off. Back to letting this incubate for now.
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Two thoughts...an extra 30mm width isn't that bad considering the overall machine volume and if you keep the motors and rails above the halo consider using block offsets for raising the motors. It would be simple enough on a manual mill and pretty quick on a CNC.
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