The 3018XL plotter now lives on a different bench than it grew up on and the stepper motors resonate the plywood benchtop wonderfully well. After finding the machine weighs enough to flatten small foam blocks under the Official Feet, I cut out four 60×80 mm foot pad brackets:
They’re attached to the 2040 frame extrusions with M4 screws into tee nuts; the third hole is there just in case it became necessary. I’m not sure whether MDF will bend under that offset load, but having all four brackets perfectly fit into two pieces of MDF left over from previous projects was a compelling justification.
Some utility knife work produced the foam pads from a big sheet of polyethylene packing material:
A piece of double-sided duct tape with amazingly gooey adhesive joins foam and bracket.
If the resonance was annoying to my deflicted hearing, it must have been pretty bad. Now, even Mary thinks it sounds OK.
Now, to discover whether the machine’s weight squashes those big foam blocks.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 