Well, the 10 meters of GT2 belt I ordered has arrived and is in good shape.  Now as soon as the Openrail arrives I will have everything I need to get it operational although it will still need a couple of items to finish it.  

I will be using Dibond for the skin which is an aluminium composite.  This is composed of a thin sheet of aluminium(0.5mm) with a foam core followed by another sheet of aluminium to complete the sandwich.  This means it's very light but the aluminium will be enough to resist the laser from poking holes in it.

I will also be ordering some more aluminium honeycomb for the laser bed.  This is ideal because it is cheap, lightweight and best of all it has minimal surface area in the path of the beam reducing flashback which will mark the back of materials but it also allows my extraction to pull the smoke below the bed away from the material and optics.

There will be more updates soon, I expect the openrail to arrive in the few days and then it's game on.  

This time next week the machine should be cutting!