What should be the thickness of machine tool bed?

Question

I am developing Five-in-One machine tool which I did as a project working during 1984-85 in our Polytechnic college. Even though we made prototype at that time, now I want to make prototype for production version. It can be a cubical size of 1-1/2 to 2 meters.

Answer 1

IMHO the most important parameter that will affect the thickness are the vibrational performance of the machine bed, which in turn depends on :

• rpms of the motors
• feed rates
• load
• support of the bed
• etc.

Probably you need to make it thick enough to be: a) rigid b) with a large mass.