Rail grinding
 

From reading other posts, grinding the rails for the x and y axis seems to be significant hurdle in the construction of this machine. Why not use a 1" x 1" angle iron arranged in an inverted "V" welded to a flat bar?

Gary,

I think it's because it's hard to get this perfectly straight.

When you first cut the angle into a specific height, and then add the 90 degree angle, it's much easer to iron out any un-evens over the full length. After all you want to have it straight, but also have teh same hight over the complete length.

From what I read is that most people look up to the task, but in the end most of the people succeed with a day of work for the X and Y rails. I am not a metal worker, but I could don't it and for my first try, it didn't turn out to bad at all.

Ries

Gary,
If you could solve the inherent issues Ries mentioned above, you can use whatever methods you prefer.
The rail grinding looks difficult but it is not, just laborious.
Try it for yourself, if you can't cope with it, you can always buy bolt-on rails.

Gary, in Ideas & Experiments with different rail styles your proposal was tried for a while by Art. (discarded by post #39)