Gantry Upgrade to C-Beam

I did a quick cut last night. The project is a box frame that will be covered with foam and paint so any flaws would not matter. A good test project:

First I did not have enough z height.
With my sacrifice sheet in place and the 1/4" bit inserted as far as it could go (too far actually) I have about 2 mm of clearance. I made it work but it took me a while to figure out I needed to remove the 10mm safety height from my cut file. And of course I hit my clamp. (I am going to have to cut a few new ones.)

First it started with the rabbit joints. It cut beatify, powering through the plywood no problem. No notable flex in the gantry. Then cutting the holes. Here I made a mistake, I did the holes as profile cuts not pockets. So each hole had a small “plug” of remaining wood in the center. The bit would hit the plug as it moved out of the pocket. Sometimes jamming the plug against the wall of the hole. Now before this would guarantee missed steps. Not this time.
The impact would just make the whole thing shake, but no slipping belt, no flexing gantry. On a particularly bad hit, the work piece would move under the clamps! That right the clamps failed instead of loosing steps. That is a first.
I went ahead and finished the cut, knowing that this didn’t need precision. The work piece tended to shift back into the original position so it was not that bad. I just kept a careful eye on it, hoping nothing got too bad.

The final profile cut went just fine, no issues. Just lots of sawdust. (I need to make a new dust shoe asap. )

So after this unintentional torture test I feel very happy with this upgrade. :grinning:

One weird thing happened that I can’t figure out.
One of the rabbit cuts was shifted 12mm too far in the X axis.
I thought it was a error in the print file as everything else lined up as expected.
If it was missed steps it should have shifted everything as it was one of the first cuts.
:confused:
The only thing I can think of is that the work piece got shifted when doing the cut, the shifted back after? It was doing it for the holes, but they were only shifting a couple of mm. (I fixed the part by widening the rabbit joint with my table saw)
I am hoping this was a one time thing and not a symptom of some issue. I am tempted to re-run the cut file (after fixing the hole’s cut strategy) just to see what will happen.

I really need to redo my end brackets to give me a more workable Z height.
I have a new 1/8" collet for my router on order. As soon as that comes in I will cut some new plates.