That is exactly what I did. I haven’t had a chance to take photos of it. But an amazing improvement.
Looking forward to seeing the final product. It’s going to look nice with the smooth top bar. I still want to make mine look a bit nicer and give it a better paint job. I’m pretty happy with the aluminum so might pickup another strip and try the plug welding approach with that. Just wish I had a nice Coke machine to bake some powder coating on it. 
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I have lock nuts on at the moment and they have not budged, however Robert in an earlier post suggested regular nuts with Loctite might be better.
And… while you are power coating, if you have not already stiffened the y-axis, you might want to cut out some of these y-axis braces: MWP Y Axis Braces | Inventables
I did this for mine and its the best y-axis stiffening mod I’ve come across so far and looks like it should have come with the machine.
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That sounds pretty aggressive. I wonder if bolting on top of the work surface would pickup vibrations which could more easily be carried through to the maker slide. Just a thought.
The ones I pointed to add a vertical support which bolts on with t-slots between the maker slide and the bottom 20x20 extrusion.
Thinking about it more, I don’t think the tolerances are tight enough to matter. I’m just naturally allergic to drilling through the extrusions…
Just reread… I see now that you are using existing bolts.
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Looks good! I’ve thought about adding T-Tracks once its time to replace the existing waste board. The nice part about that is it will be pretty easy to cut out the waste board pieces to change them out over time.
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I don’t have any pics handy, but I recently did a similar thing. I ended up building a “half torsion box” out of 1x3s and 3/4 plywood, then I used pre-insertion nuts and M5 screws to screw the front and back extrusions to the plywood.
Then I screwed T-track to the 3/4 plywood and cut up my old wasteboard to fill in between the t-tracks.
I really like it, I had been planning on ordering the aluminum t-slot panels for the bottom, but that would have been in the $200 range, and I did this with supplies I had on hand. I suspect that what I have is more solid than what I would have gotten from the aluminum panels, and that I still would have had to build the plywood base to fasten the panels to.
-Kelly
I just did this very same thing this past weekend. I skipped the $128 wasteboard and $128 in shipping when I ordered my XC and bought three 3/4" MDF panels.
One panel I ripped into 3" wide strips, 46" long as the sides and 8" as the fillers for the torsion box, then glued and nailed everything together.
I used the other 2 MDF panels for the top and bottom. My overall dimensions were 46" x 46".
I used Minwax wood hardener, mounted 5 T tracks parallel with the Y axis rails, and finally screwed the Y axis rails directly to the box with angle brackets.
Lastly I took another 3/4" MDF sheet cut to fit between the T-track, with a small rabbet to overlap the tracks just a bit (saw someone else did this).
Finally, after squaring \ leveling X & Y, and shimming and plumbing the Z axis, I used a 1/2 bit to flatten my new wasteboard strips.
Now I need to build an enclosure with a lift top… that’s for another weekend.
@KellyHickel is talking about T-Slot panels, I priced those and it was definitely $200 for 1000mm panels. I bought t-slot tracks (not panels) from Amazon for ~$12 a piece, plus I had some from Rockler left over from another project…
That’s a beautiful dust shield! I thought the acrylic mirror I used was nice, but I REALLY like that dark plastic.
you know guys i did the same mod to my machine the other day but then I realized that I wanted to upgrade to the 9mm belts and guess what i cant do that now with this mod does anyone have the 9mm belts and this mod done?
No I havent been breaking them but I was cutting some 1inch oak the other day and they slipped for the first time ever
But I have found also that if you have to much dust build up on the machine rails that it will compact itself into the vwheels and make the machine do that also
I think if the spacer was shortened on the smooth idler pullies you could have enough clearence
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Have you checked the tension on the belts?
That was my thought as well. I haven’t tried the bolt through method to compare, but I can’t imagine it does much more than this mod which is non-destructive and a lot easier to implement. I highly recommend at least trying this method first.
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I had similar mod with washer and strip of alu at the bottom and I had to revert it to go with 9mm.
Had to go with T aluminum shape and drill. You can see on this picture how much space are idlers taking and they are also bit taller so they ride on the extrusion.
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This was before I applied any force to bottom wheels. As far as I seen there is no issue and they make contact, ill check later when home.
Phil, I grabbed my calipers on my lunch break and checked- it seems your 3D model earlier in this thread was accurate, the width of the flat surfaces separated by the gap is just under 0.75". So, is there any reason for using 1" aluminum bar on the underside instead of 3/4"?