This would be my concern with it as well.
agreed if you use 8mm you are going to need to couterbore which makes them weaker or you will need to edit the hardware size.
The ACM I can source is used for sign making and is 3mm sheets with 0.3mm of Ali on each face so a double tick piece should be 6mm which (i think) is workable. I’m not that sure its stiffness is going to be that close to solid aluminium - or enough to make no difference. I was planning on using ACM for the X axis panels though.
Yep. I think Ryan previously mentioned in a material list for strut panels that ACM is a choice.
That said… re. this:
…the duty requirements for strut plates and XZ plates are very different.
I can see ACM as a strut plate, but not as an XZ plate. Not even doubled up. The outer skin is too thin and the plastic in the core is too soft. In a lot of times I’ve used it, tightening a screw presses a dent as it all flexes. I think the plastic core is not solid but rather corrugated, and the plastic itself seems designed to flex and bend.
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I used 12mm M3 screws with my 8mm plates. 
What’s the bounding box dimensions for the aluminium plates, roughly? Just to see what size of offcuts I need to start scavenging for?
Not fully decided yet. So hard to say.
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And longer M5’s, be careful making general statements about a machine that is not released. At least make sure they are complete.
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True, sorry.
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I’m loving all the updates I’m seeing on the new LR4 platform, but I’d rather this thing be well thought out and robust than available sooner. My LR3 and MPCNC will work just fine until you guys are ready to release the newest member of the family.
Any thoughts on an upgrade kit for LR3 to LR4 like you did for the LR2 to LR3 transition?
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If you are doing any sort of “Sourcing” i would just go for actual auminium.
I wouldn’t make generic claims about all ACM. I am evaluating the stuff I have specifically.
The ACM I have is Alucobond branded. Has .5mm thick walls and solid core. The ease of deformation of the outer skin is a real risk for the physically gifted among us but nothing that can’t be mitigated with a nice washer.
The website has some data for comparing to solid aluminium.
More info here:
I’ll be in the garage attatching it to my lowrider.
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Absolutely, and, it will be much less.
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New guy here. I am looking at starting a build in the next month or so. I wanted to go with the aluminum XZ plates right away. Since the V3 plates are sold out do you have an estimate for release of the V4 and the new metal XZ plates?
It sounds like the printed parts will be different, but the Hardware kit, flashed drivers and Jackpot controller will be the same. Is this correct? Basically, if I purchased these three items now, I would just need to print the parts and purchase the metal XZ parts when V4 is released?
No, the hardware count on some of the nuts and bolts is sure to be a little different.
We’re in the borderlands, the umbra, purgatory. Waiting between the past and the future…
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Ok, walk me through that one. Are those printed end plates rigid enough to actually be usable?
Looks cool.
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Yes I cut my actual Y plates on this, but they were never meant to be used. The print was intended as a routing template so that I could bolt it to the MDF and use a trim router to go around them.
It worked… But I didn’t have long enough router bits to do it in one pass. I could take them off and do the second pass with the partial cut as the template, but I think I ran out of garage time. At the same time I had three unfinished vorons cause I had a history of procrastinating on wiring, so worried that this would be the fate of this machine, I slapped them on, to have a platform to test teh firmware/wiring on.
Another idea I had was to print this thinner, maybe a couple of bottom/top layers and epoxy my beloved Alucobond to it and then trim it to the edges, then repeating on the other side, having a little torsion box of alucobond and infill. But the machine ended up cutting well enough for making Y plates and struts so there was ultimately no point.
The other reason is that I was very inspired by reprap philosophy early on of reducing “Vitamins” in builds. So a lot of things I make I intentionally reduce bom, screws, anything that I think is excessive out of curiosity. So this was opportunity and a tiny bit of necessity and oodles of curiosity.
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Interesting approach honestly. I know when I first build my LR3 I printed out paper templates and hand cut them out of MDF, used those to actually cut them out more accurately, works great in a pinch
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Want to build the LR3 while I wait. But seems like parts are not being replenished anyway to get a window on what kind of wait if I can’t get metal plates that I will be looking at?
As far as I’m aware, the metal plates were always intended to be a ‘nice to have’ performance upgrade, not a necessity.
If you wanted to get started you could print the side plates and then use those to machine the aluminium plates yourself, or just keep using them with the LR3 and buy Ryan’s metal plates later down the track as part of an upgrade to an LR4.
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