Need mechanical info for X carriage design.

I am about to do some redesign on my Prusa printer and am looking for info which would help me with the design. Initially I want to redesign the X Carriage and the Extruder for the best compromise or mass and rigidity. To this end, what I need is pointers to posts in this or other forums where these are discussed. I have seen posts like that before, but am unable to locate them. Blogs by experianced designers would also help.

As a member of the baby-boomer generation, I find I need to babied along with explanations that have got some theory and perhaps a smidgeon of maths. Not too great with throw away "PQR is best" explanations.

Thanks,

Mike

im slow learner ... and builder ... too .... lol, perhaps looking at others build blogs would help

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__my mixed bag blog || aka --> [http] || ___ so 3D printing is everywhere ... dont worry, hospitals can now 3Dprint body parts, they will charge you $1million excluding surgical fees ... you will die paying your debts. thats their aim ___ if every patent expires tomorrow, everybody will surely get a 3dprinter and make EVERYTHING ! ____ there is a "DIY-DTG" t shirt printing forum, you can mod an EPSON printer to PRINT like a pro. ___ CNCzone? overly commercialized it seems ___ my country? they will be taxing you for every cm of road you use and track you to your grave using GPS and its government authorized, now they will fire all the traffic wardens instead.___ EEVBLOG? there is only 1 way to do things --> take it apart like a pro

Nope, me pretty quick learner, dab hand at construction too. Not too great at guessing how much force filament needs to go through an extruder, how fast an X Carriage will accelerate with a given stepper - and oh so many more.

I don't recall seeing many hard data on that sort of stuff, Reprap seems to be mostly trial and error. One guy who puts numbers on things is nophead, and sure enough I found some stuff on his blog [hydraraptor.blogspot.de]

Is there any reason why baby-boomers are more inclined to these things than anyone else?

Naturally I will refer to nophead's blog, but what would be good though is to find some of the posts - many from nophead - that I skimmed over when I was busy building my original printers and was more interested in just getting them working. Now is the time to strive for perfection.
Baby-boomers were bought up in the days when man was landing on the moon and making things was good, but you had to learn the theory to even make a balsa wood model plane - so it comes naturally. Easy and user-friendly without knowing how it works is actually quite hard.

It would be good to collect up some of those posts on theory and put them on the wiki.

ISWYM about baby-boomers. Todays generation is very much consumer culture, i.e. buy and discard. I guess I fall somewhere between the two. As kids we used to make our own toys, so the idea of making stuff is natural. That was just before the flood of cheap stuff from the Far East and the general transformation of domestic manufacturing into assembly and service. A lot of my peers though are of the consumer nature, "why not just buy one?" is the usual comment.