CarveZilla update...

CarveZilla update...  The first parts for mine arrived today: the rails for the X-axis carriage and the Y-axis carriage (photos below).  These are all 6' long (to allow us a 4' square working area), and are steel rods supported along their entire length.  Linear bearings with recirculating balls will hold the carriages.  We bought these from a source in China for about a quarter the cost of U.S. or Japanese sources.  We'll see how well they actually work out, but just moving them by hand they feel smooth as silk.  For that sort of price advantage, we figured it was worth taking a risk. These were packed quite nicely: wrapped in plastic, then the “rope” shown at right, then a layer of a sort of plastic burlap, another layer of plastic, a layer of thick, tough paper, and a final layer of plastic.  They arrived here from Shanghai in perfect shape.  That rope is interesting.  At first blush I thought it was sisal, but on closer inspection it appeared to be made out of grass leaves.  I did some research on it, and found that it's more likely made of bamboo leaves – that material is commonly used for cushioning sharp metal edges in Asia, as it's both relatively soft and very tough.  I can vouch for the latter: cutting it was far more challenging for my knife than sisal rope would have been...