Bill,

I had a similar experience. I wanted a MFT style table that was not a knock-down type. I had heard that one issue with MFT was that it was prone to get out of alignment due to its knock-down feature.

On the other hand, our industrial engineers made many things out of 80/20. I never really inquired as we did have skilled labor force including carpenters. Most that I recall were carts being used for a task, like a programming station or for placing the product while it was being tested. I know we had limited space in labs and in production so a possible reason could be the ability to make it exactly the size they wanted and as for why not have the carpenters build it. Well, their dept would have to pay for what the shop would charge and it is very possible that 80/20 was close and a lot less headache working with a union shop.

Imran