Making a sturdy-ish workbench with foldable/detachable legs that does not wobble?

[ziplock9000]

I need to make a 900x900x900 workbench for my laser cutting machine. However the room it will be situated in does not have doors wide enough for this to be moved in and out and it has to be able to do that. So the legs need to either fold up, be detachable or some other mechanism to make one axis of the table smaller than an average door.
While the workbench doesn't need to be anywhere near as sturdy as a woodworker's bench, it does have to have as little wobble as possible. The legs must attach with a nice stiff wobble-less joint so that when the laser head is zipping around the bench is not vibrate or wobble, so the leg attachments must be quite solid and stiff.

I've not settled on which wood I'll be using as it depends on availability and I'd like a cheap solution if possible.

I've thought about just using a heavy hinge and partially fold the legs up, or maybe just bolt the legs on and lastly a screw attachment in the middle of the leg pointing up that screws into the head of the table. With the bolt solution obviously going through two pieces of wood when fastening the legs, that will change the overall design as well.

Anyway, any advice would be great.

Thanks.

EDIT: It can't be attached to a wall.

(I didn't put this in the laser sub-forum as this is about the workbench not the laser)

 

[Bingy man]

A decent 18 mm plywood fixed to a couple of saw horses is about as portable as you can get. I use bora speedhorse xt . They have adjustable feet and are very stable . There are several other makes of course but I liked the weight capacity and the adjustable legs of the xt. The horses can also be used for projects.

 

[ziplock9000]

A decent 18 mm plywood fixed to a couple of saw horses is about as portable as you can get. I use bora speedhorse xt . They have adjustable feet and are very stable . There are several other makes of course but I liked the weight capacity and the adjustable legs of the xt. The horses can also be used for projects.

I looked into a setup like that and assumed it would certainly be strong, but possibly still wobble with tressles/saw horses that are not as expensive as the speedhorse XT. As unfortunatly I can't afford £280 on just two of those.
I suppose the option is to make my own too out of thick wood to give it heft, but I still anticipate some wobble. I am however, just guessing that it will.

 

[Bingy man]

I looked into a setup like that and assumed it would certainly be strong, but possibly still wobble with tressles/saw horses that are not as expensive as the speedhorse XT. As unfortunatly I can't afford £280 on just two of those.
I suppose the option is to make my own too out of thick wood to give it heft, but I still anticipate some wobble. I am however, just guessing that it will.

Toolstation do a set by a relatively new maker ( minotaur ) not sure if they are adjustable but I looked at them as they had a set on display. They looked and felt quite solid . Looks like they are
adjustable too.

 

[Sachakins]

How about a frame narrow enough to through door, and have the top as a flip top and fix laser to it'll drop a video here in a few minutes.

This type of idea could work.

 

[Cabinetman]

Don’t know how much time you want to spend on this, have a look at a Moravian bench, knocks down for ease of moving. Really sturdy yet fairly light.
Ian

 

[ziplock9000]

Don’t know how much time you want to spend on this, have a look at a Moravian bench, knocks down for ease of moving. Really sturdy yet fairly light.
Ian

I just had a look and they are lovely workbenches but way too much for what I need in scale of project and likely price for timber.

 

[poshpaws]

Where is the wobble coming from?

If it’s from you or other things moving around a heavy desk is probably not going to totally cure it

 

[ziplock9000]

Where is the wobble coming from?

If it’s from you or other things moving around a heavy desk is probably not going to totally cure it

"The legs must attach with a nice stiff wobble-less joint so that when the laser head is zipping around the bench is not vibrate or wobble"

 

[Adam W.]

Legs.....Make the stackable ones.



Top with some 2" x 9" C24 joists.

 

[Sideways]

A thought.
The weight of a laser head must be absolutely trivial compared to the weight and cutting forces applied to the head of a cnc router. This makes me think that the problem to be solved can't be that difficult.
I'd be tempted to try and overpower it by using a heavy table top. That will have very much more inertia than the inertia of the moving parts of a laser cutter and will go a long way to damping any vibration. Just cut an 8x4' sheet of 18 or 25mm MRMDF in half and use it doubled up to make a cheapish but heavy and stable worktop. MDF is used in speaker cabinets because it damps vibrations and doesn't want to resonate.
After you have the top, try it on sawhorses first as it may be good enough as is. If you need to go more rigid, make a decent simple solid softwood frame to go under with the top bolted through onto the frame. You will need diagonal braces or to sheet the back and sides of the frame to stiffen it against the sideways vibration of the laser head
For knock down, you could make two individual half sized under frames so they'll easily fit through your doorway, four extra bolts or clamps could join these together in use.
To stop wobble, just drill into the bottom ends of the legs and fit good sized screw adjustable machine feet into them all. (Axminster and many other suppliers). That way you can dial out any rocking of the table because of uneven floor.
If you put a low shelf on your support frame(s), you can sling your toolboxes or whatever onto that and add a ton more weight. That'll stabilise it even more.

I have an aluminium framed workbench at mine that is light enough for me to pickup single handed, but when I add heavy top and shelf with a load of powertool boxes / cases of screws on it and a 60kg steel slab on the top, the weight heads north of 200kg and it all becomes very solid and immobile.

 

[ziplock9000]

A thought.
The weight of a laser head must be absolutely trivial compared to the weight and cutting forces applied to the head of a cnc router. This makes me think that the problem to be solved can't be that difficult.
I'd be tempted to try and overpower it by using a heavy table top. That will have very much more inertia than the inertia of the moving parts of a laser cutter and will go a long way to damping any vibration. Just cut an 8x4' sheet of 18 or 25mm MRMDF in half and use it doubled up to make a cheapish but heavy and stable worktop. MDF is used in speaker cabinets because it damps vibrations and doesn't want to resonate.
After you have the top, try it on sawhorses first as it may be good enough as is. If you need to go more rigid, make a decent simple solid softwood frame to go under with the top bolted through onto the frame. You will need diagonal braces or to sheet the back and sides of the frame to stiffen it against the sideways vibration of the laser head
For knock down, you could make two individual half sized under frames so they'll easily fit through your doorway, four extra bolts or clamps could join these together in use.
To stop wobble, just drill into the bottom ends of the legs and fit good sized screw adjustable machine feet into them all. (Axminster and many other suppliers). That way you can dial out any rocking of the table because of uneven floor.
If you put a low shelf on your support frame(s), you can sling your toolboxes or whatever onto that and add a ton more weight. That'll stabilise it even more.

I have an aluminium framed workbench at mine that is light enough for me to pickup single handed, but when I add heavy top and shelf with a load of powertool boxes / cases of screws on it and a 60kg steel slab on the top, the weight heads north of 200kg and it all becomes very solid and immobile.

The thing with the laser head, although it's lighter than a CNC router head it changes velocity and direction on average far faster than a CNC router head. So this can easily wobble a table. Well, at least the crappy fold up table I'm using at the moment.
I'm going to try your first suggestion and have already made a relatively heavy table top to go onto the existing light folding table I'm currently using. Maybe the extra mass might help to dampen the wobble. If this does not work I can extend the table top with the rest of the frame and some of the other suggestions.

 

[paulrbarnard]

The thing with the laser head, although it's lighter than a CNC router head it changes velocity and direction on average far faster than a CNC router head. So this can easily wobble a table. Well, at least the crappy fold up table I'm using at the moment.
I'm going to try your first suggestion and have already made a relatively heavy table top to go onto the existing light folding table I'm currently using. Maybe the extra mass might help to dampen the wobble. If this does not work I can extend the table top with the rest of the frame and some of the other suggestions.

Does the wobble actually matter? Everything related to the laser is all rigidly located by the laser frame.

 

[HamsterJam]

Peter Millard / Ten Minute Workshop has a couple of YouTube videos on making a foldable workbench.
IIRC it was quite stable. Might be worth a look…

 

[ziplock9000]

Does the wobble actually matter? Everything related to the laser is all rigidly located by the laser frame.

In theory everything else should be relative to it, but in practice it's not always, even when everything is clamped down.

 

[Chubber]

This probably isn't 'posh enough' but the design has served me well for years. The full width back panel gives immense rigidity when hand planing, something I did a lot of before buying machinary.

Inexpensive, rigid and easy to fit out with shelves etc.

I would say match your sheet material to your router bit, or in extremis, run the grooves on the table saw. My first, years ago I machined with a Black and Decker drill saw attachment with a 5" rip blade in the house hallway because my tiny shed wasn't big enough...



View attachment 187507

This is inexpensive, very rigid, and quick to build.

 

[Stanleymonkey]

Can the workbench have an attachment point to a wall?

Collapsible bench I know - but it can be quickly screwed or bolted to a piece of wood that you mount on the wall.