The technical field of the question is gantries in CoreXY 3D printers, where a gantry moves in Y direction and it holds a carriage sliding in X direction. In the following image, X is horizontal and Y is vertical.
When the gantry changes vertical (Y) direction suddenly, it acts as a beam supported at both ends and it deflects/resonates. This results in reduced quality (the 3D prints show waves on some surfaces) which forces more conservative settings for the acceleration and longer print times.
Different materials are commonly used for the gantry, but even if I know what moment of inertia is, I cannot grasp the (theoretical) connection between moment of inertia, density of the material, Young modulus.
A typical case is a carriage 300 g heavy mounted on one of the following profiles as stiffening support.
aluminium 2020 extrusions (I=7.4x10^3 mm^4, 0.25 kg, Young modulus 70 GPa)
square hollow aluminium profile (Young modulus 70 GPa)
- 1 mm wall (I=4.5x10^3 mm^4, 0.1 kg)
- 2 mm wall (I=7.8x10^3 mm^4, 0.2 kg)
square steel hollow profile (Young modulus 200 GPa)
- 1 mm wall (I=4.5x10^3 mm^4, 0.27 kg)
- 2 mm wall (I= 7.8x10^3 mm^4, 0.54 kg)
I ignored the steel rail on which the carriage actually slides, and the use of carbon fibers beams.
Which combination would result in:
- lowest amplitude of the resonance
- highest resonance frequency
I can see that a 2 mm alu profile has the same weight and Young's modulus as a 2020 profile, but a moment of inertia about 10 times as much: it will be better from any point of view, it's easy to understand because only one parameter changes.
However, how do I compare those performances of interest (amplitude and frequency of resonance) between steel and aluminium? for a given moment of inertia steel weight is almost 3 times as high, but so is Young's modulus.