I use 1/8" plastic and some small flathead screws to hold it to the plywood.
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the 3" wide tape is reasonable at $25, but above that the price isn’t really worth it anymore.
This was one of my concerns with using it for a sled, which was why I bought the width I did since it was intended to be applied to 1/2 to 3/4 material.
Personally, my plan is to use 1/4" HDPE on the bottom of a steel sled, but I plan on using 3 arc shaped pieces to reduce the size that I need to buy as well as providing air channels for the vacuum.
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The sled is much torn up, testing various linkages. Not much to see from the plastic side, a circle of plastic with a round hole in the middle and three #4 flathead screws. I picked 1/8" because it was cheap and I had some 1/8" hardboard to put around it so I could cut the circles on the Maslow.
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Nice find. And the three #4 screws hold the HDPE well? Also, what bit did you use to cut the plastic?
The screws do fine. It’s been a long time since I did the cutting, but it was probably a single flute 1/4" bit at 11K RPM and feedrate around 15ipm. Practice the cut in the outer corners with a small shape before doing the real cut…
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cool thanks …
What type of bit do I need to do a round over?
a round over bit 
something like these
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should he have chain go behind now? he’s not far enough in to understand the changes being made. recommendations? here’s what he has so far. middle bar in front is going to move down to about 2’ above angle supports.
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can you explain how you used the hardboard and cut it in the maslow?
yes angles like that can hold the workpiece and wasteboard,just keep in mind that since that angle is 2". you need to have that much material or you run the risk of hitting the angle with the edge of the sled.
most of the time you are not working that close to the edge anyway
but if you are wanting to bring in your plywood in pieces, you will want to have more support for it than just the two angles.
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For your installation I’d suggest a bottom board. Mount a 2x4 with a bolt through it to the unistrut above the angles on each end. A minor primer on fasteners - most people see a fastener (bolt, or screw) as a “tightening force” pulling one surface towards another. While this is one of the functions of a fastener they most often are pinning a lateral force agains shear strength. In this case the angles will work, if you bold a “ledge” above them across as a working surface - you get 100% working surface from side to side. Without something like this, over time putting material on the angles you will bounce the material and eventually deform the angle and they will fail. The Ledge will straighten and absorb this force.
I hope this helps
Thank you
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any recommendations on what cad program he should use?
he’s done some autocad, tinkercad, sketchup before but not super
proficient.
he’s most comfortable with illustrator which he says can generate a svg file.
would that work?
i wouldn’t think so but i don’t know much about CAM.
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If Illustrator can export .svg files, then he could use MakerCAM.com to program his parts. It will import svg files just fine and it’s pretty straighforward to use. Bar goes through the workflow to generate G-Code from SVG in this YouTube video. The beginning of the video covers exporting from Sketch-up, but if you want to just skip ahead to the MakerCAM part go to 1:58.
If he’s willing/has time to learn 3D CAD, I highly recommend either Fusion 360 or Onshape. Both are free programs for what he would be using them for. Fusion 360 is free for hobbyists and students, and somewhere around $300 a year if you’re actually making money using the program (which is nothing next to the $3,000-$7,000 other professional CAD subscriptions cost). It has built-in CAM, which is the reason that I primarily use it. Onshape is entirely open-source. It doesn’t have built-in CAM, but you can use the Kiri:Moto app and that will give you CAM.
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thanks.
i’m hoping he’ll go with fusion360 as well since it
seems to make sense that it’s all integrated.
he’s worried the learning curve is too high.
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Since he has some experience already with CAD, the learning curve shouldn’t be too high. It took me about a week of playing around to start to get comfortable with it. I do have a lot of prior 3D CAD experience, however. Before Fusion, I had been drawing in Solidworks, Creo, AutoCAD, and Rhino since about 2011.
For a crash course in the user interface, Lars Christensen does a good job in this video:
I found these YouTube tutorials very helpful when I was first learning Fusion. They help cover building assemblies from sketches, user variables, nesting parts, and setting up CAM toolpaths.
I made the flat pack stool from the second video here.
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More obtuse but totally free and can do 2 & 3 is Blender.
There are options to get .svg exports. I also see options to .dfx My son jumped in to blender at about 16 and is now 23, he can kick out a design pretty fast. Lots of youtube on how to get going.
Thank you
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