While the glue-ups were drying on the gantry, I went back and did some more work on the Z-axis. I finished the router mount for my smaller DeWalt DWP611 router. I glued a few pieces of wood to the carriage with threaded T-nuts driven into the wood. The two router mount pieces get bolted into those T-nuts so that I can install other mounts for my larger DW618 router or anything else I may want to mount in the future.
Next I started drilling and tapping the aluminum bar stock to accept the Z rail mounting screws. I decided to initially install the rails without any machining and see how it works out for this proof-of-concept machine. If necessary, I can always go back and have these machined flat, or have shoulders machined to mount the rails against. The bar stock is still not attached to the carriage in this picture. It is just a test fit prior to epoxying the bars in place.
