Spoilboard Ideas?

[Steve355Participant @steve355]

<p style=”text-align: center;”>Hi</p>
For my projects I often find myself profiling, chamfering and engraving brass sheet (0.9mm recently). To do this I’ve been using a chipboard spoilboard I guess 3mm thick. See video.

Problem is, however careful I am, when screwed down to the bed with this material in between, the brass isn’t remotely flat, and remains springy at the edges.

does anybody have any ideas for a spoiler board material that is less compressible, and very cheap? I thought of using cheap vinyl floor tiles or something but I haven’t yet come up with a brilliant solution.

ideas welcome!

Steve

 

 

[Andy StopfordParticipant @andystopford50521]

How about using that hot melt glue that comes in sheets?

[Wal WerbelParticipant @walwerbel59154]

I also CNC cut thin sheets of brass and alu, quite often I need to run a round-over end-mill along the edges, so flatness is important.

I screw down 18mm MDF to my bed and surface it.

I then apply 50mm wide 3M masking tape to the back of the plate and also to the freshly surfaced MDF (dust removed, obvs).  Super glue then applied in thin beads along the lengths of the masking tape, plate positioned and weighted down using another flat bit of MDF along with several 20-odd-kg handled weights (shown in the last pic aiding a wood gluing effort).

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

I generally use MDF with the 2-tape and superglue approach mentioned by Wal.  A nicer material that I have some offcuts of is “”Valchromat” which is denser, has a smaller grain, and flatter.  If you are careful with DOC an alternative is to glue down on a single layer of 3M blue masking tape on metal, so the DOC just gets through the metal.  Then boil to release the part.

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

First post said “see video” but I don’t see link. Are you using a board on top of the sheet?

[Wal WerbelParticipant @walwerbel59154]

Indeed – Valchromat is lovely, but I haven’t been fortunate enough to have any larger offcuts come my way.

Metal to metal before boiling off works great when you need a stronger bond, ie. for milling fiddly shapes where a lot of the glued area gets removed.  Just don’t glue over any screws that you may need to get to in order to remove the sacrificial bit of metal – that ol’ chestnut I know so well…  😂

OR direct (no tape) to hardwood worktop off-cuts like in the image below – once done you can dab on acetone which will degrade the super-glue and let you release the work without needing to use too much force.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

I also us eMDF, Melamine faced or just plain depending on what offcuts I have at the time. Masking tape to the board and back of th emetal then superglue the two tape surface stogether.

Get your DOC right and you don’t even spoil the spoil board as you can just partly cut into the layers of tape.

 

[John HinkleyParticipant @johnhinkley26699]

When using my Shapeoko router, I found that for cases such as these and where it wasn’t either possible or desirable to use clamps, 3M Super Sticky clear tape worked well.  So well, in fact, that it was often difficult to remove the workpiece from the sacrificial board.  Not impossible, but it needs to be used sparingly.  One source is on eBay, here.

Not the seller I used, but has a wide selection of widths, lengths  and colours.

John

 

[Steve355Participant @steve355]

Sorry, video was too big to upload , even when I made it small. Pic below instead.

I have tried the superglue/ double side tape approach in the past and it would not reliably stick. Perhaps it was the substrate I was sticking it to – which was probably

Imagine doing several of these a day… I thought it would be easier to drill a spoilboard and the workpiece and bolt it on. No tape to put on or clean off etc.

 

 

 

[DalboyParticipant @dalboy]

For many jobs I use the dividers from toilet cubicles (Washed first) It is about 1/2″ thick and very solid and does not bend easily. That is if you can find somewhere they are refurbishing some. Mine came from a school; that was having work done.

It machine well as I have just made a part from it.

 

The cut edge was done with a circular saw

 

[Author]

Posts