On my eShapeoko, one of the things I figured needed improvement were the Yplates.

On my eShapeoko, one of the things I figured needed improvement were the Yplates. These were originally made of 2mm stainless steel. When moving the machine by hand on one side only after several mm the other side started moving as well and the plates are visually flexing.

So I decided to grab the original drawings, slightly modify them (removed several unneeded holes and added some more) and cut them from 5mm aluminium. It took about an hour for each plate, but I am very pleased with the result as the rigidity has improved drastically and…the 5mm alu plates are even slightly less heavy than the 2 mm stainless steel plates.

There are tables on wiki that explain the stiffness of different materials like alu and steel. It is very interesting reading regarding such problem. And stiffness is not to be confused with elasticity or strength.