10ft by 10ft Lowrider 3?

LowRider CNC Hardware Development
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Hello, I had an idea or a pretty sweet upgrade to my lowrider 3 I just finished building and wanted to hear if anyones tinkered with anything similar.

I made my machine 4X8 so it can handle a full sheet of plywood, but then what if I wanted to cut two full sheets of plywood at a time. If I just extended the X axis to be 10ft a full length conduit then in theory I could attach another router assembly to it and have a stick keep them 4ft apart and fastened together so the original router assembly will move the second router assembly (that doesn’t have a motor installed) along the x axis. I’d likely want to mirror the Y axis conduit rail assembly onto both sides to give the thing a better chance at working. It would be a relatively cheap upgrade to double my cutting capacity, I could even install more router assemblys along the rail but even just having two might be overkill haha, just such a cool idea.

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if you figured out the coding for it, you should be able to run two separate tools completely independent from each other like IDEX in 3d printing.

Would be a cool project even if you didnt extend your gantry. The Y axis would be tricky, but the IDEX 3D printers figured it out.

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It would be fun but might slow it down significantly. One router twice as fast seems like a good idea to me.

I mean, I would love to see it.

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Oh and 8’ x 8’ would be better. No reason to add an extra 2’ on each end.

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There is a LR idex by @jamiek: Outdoor IDEX build

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And if you use 3D printer firmware then this feature can be used directly.

Aza is also building one.

The trouble with two rails is that if they are imperfect, then they will “fight” each other on the X position of the gantry, and it will tend produce worse results than a single rail. With one rail determining X position and the other end following, it should work fine even if the X axis is long. It won’t be worse when it gets farther away from the rail.

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Remember that a simply supported beams stiffness is divided by the cube of its length, if the cross section and materials remain constant - double the length is 8x less stiff if I understand the engineering correctly. Consider for a moment how much easier it would be to induce deflection in chopstick held at both ends if it were same thickness and twice as long.
You may need to find other ways to compensate for this, such as supporting the x axis in the middle somehow.

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Assuming you’re running straight endmills just stack 2 sheets on top of each other and double your cut depth.

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This seems so much simpler, easier, cheaper, etc. A 9’ long gantry seems like it is asking for problems…

Deflection may be an issue if trying to cut two pieces of 3/4" ply (you would need a very long mill with considerable stick out), but thinner stock should work if limiting DOC per pass to a reasonable amount.