if you have an ikea close. Mine is over 2 hours away!
Delivery from Ikea is still probably drastically cheaper than a glass shop. There is tempered glass on amazon as well, even big pieces, Amazon.com
Getting the tempered glass has always been the hardest part of a Zen build. Nothing is changing about the glass needed for a v3.
I used polycarbonate for a top on one of my early tables. I don’t recommend it. A lot of sand would stick to the underside of the PC top due to static charges. It’s much less of a problem with glass.
PC and acrylic will scratch easily, too.
I used 5mm glass for the bottom in Arrakis 2.0 and 3/16” FR-4 sheet for the bottom of Arrakis 3.0/3.1. The FR-4 is almost as rigid as glass so there’s no problem with sag and it won’t ever break unless a truck rolls over it.
Before I built Arrakis 3.0 I did some research into glass table tops and found that 2’x4’ is a very common size, very low cost, and readily available from multiple sources. While you can fit a glass top into a slot in a box frame, you’re going to want to be able to clean the underside and to redistribute the sand periodically. Glass is heavy enough that you can just set it on top of the sandbox and it won’t go anywhere, and can be easily removed when necessary.
I used 2060 t-slot to make the sandbox in Arrakis 3.0/3.1 with the FR-4 bottom fitted into the bottom slot, and LED strips inserted in the top slot. The glass just sits on top. I’ve been meaning to paint a black frame on the underside of the glass to block direct view of the LEDs like I did with Arrakis 3.0, but haven’t gotten around to it yet.
The 2060 pieces of the sandbox are just butted and screwed together using M6 button head cap screws. I drilled tool access holes and tapped the axial holes in the extrusions. This works best if the ends of the t-slot are milled square and lengths are matched so you get square corners when the pieces are screwed together. If you can’t mill them, making 3D printed corners should allow for imprecisely cut pieces of t-slot to bolt together squarely anyway.
Oh wait, I have 2 large windows from an old storm door in the garage! The abuse they stood up to they must be tempered, lol, hmmmmmm
I had no idea you could get FR-4 that big, that is great to know, thanks!!
Most likely, any glass fitted 18” from the interior floor is required to be tempered by code along with any window in a door that could fit a baseball. So most full length windowed doors and door walls are tempered.
I know because I had to make sure our full length windows were 2 feet off the ground or those windows would have doubled in price. The code is defined in the hazardous locations window clauses.
My last Zen table, I used countertop laminate for the bottom surface. It’s quite stiff, and super thin. The ball holds to the magnet very well, because the material is so thin. I’ve only had it running for a few months, but it’s holding up well.
Nice!
Since it’s Friday… updated the fan art at https://v1e.makergalaxy.com with a cursed TEMU style buy button for the 3D printed parts 
Added exploded part views too…
I’ll switch over to the actual ZenXY v3 models if/when they’re available.
If ZenXY v3 parts aren’t intended to be openly shared at this time, then, I can decimate/downscale the original meshes so they’re useful for on-screen rendering, but intentionally not good enough to 3D print.