Hey guys. On a 5’wide CNC, would you cut your MDF 5’ long and mount it in the same direction as the gantry, or leave it 8" long and cut it 2.5’ wide?
Neither for mine. I put a 4x8 bed in my 5x10 cnc, leaving room around the edges for other things, like clamps, ATC tools, a drop front, and someday a 4th axis.
But I did make my bed 2 sheets thick, so if I did want a 5’ wide bed, I’d probably do 4x8 + 1x8 but put the 1’ wide stripe on alternating sides. You generally want the “long” way of the sheets to be perpendicular to the “long” way of the supports, with the ends over the supports so they’re… supported.
My local supplier also offers 5x5 sheets of baltic birch, so I might be tempted to do the first layer in that, and piecemeal sacrificial mdf over that.
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On my 5x10, i made the bed is 5x8. Bottom layer is made up of two 5x4 (cut from 4x8 sheets). Split so that they the edge of the last falls on the cross member. I added a sister wood cross member for the next one to attach too. Left room on the back side for my tool rack, and around 15.75 ~ 16" in the front for a rotary attachment / horizontal spoil board etc etc… Yes, I wasted 3x4’ from each MDF, but those made good practice boards and other things. For the next layer, I ripped and dado, 5" wide boards to make the top layer to go in between 2 tracks, similar to how Corbin did it.
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