Anyone using plastic furniture sliders on their sled bottom to reduce contact and friction?

I thought I read a long time ago about someone using furniture self adhesive pads/sliders on the bottom fo their sled. It would reduce surface area and also friction.
just wondering if there were long term issues with the adhesive pads coming off from all the movement?

Unless they were huge and covered the majority of the sled bottom, I’m not sure how they wouldn’t catch or fall into the pockets of the work piece.

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look through the projects section, the majority of the pockets done are so small that half a dozen 2" diameter sliders would easily cover the cutting area enough to keep the sled level

That was me, on my first sled when Maslow first started. They worked great and I had no issues, except for the plastic got scratched up after a lot of use, but you can easily replace them. Later when I made a new sled, I found not much difference with a rounded edge and sanding smooth the sled bottom. Try it though you may like it better. :+1:

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I have found some very thin Teflon shim film at Mcmaster Carr and am wondering if using some PSA to tape it to the sled might help?

it should but generally Teflon (PTFE) scratches a lot easier then UMHW. The issue with any slider is it must have very rounded edgeds and good adhjesive. once a little corner becomes loose the whole piece will eventually peel. off.

Absolutely correct. Though 3M has a couple of industrial PSA double sided tapes that are pretty tough. I find that plastics like Delrin (Acetal Homo-polymer, glass filed) etc when sanded are really super smooth as well.

Part of me is still wondering if it would not be better to use the Maslow initially to then build a vertical gantry style system…but I have not even received my Kit yet so what do I know;-)

I guess I am a) spoiled by my semi pro system at work
b) Just freaked out by the horror stories found on the forums

That bothers me too, too many people posting problems, and the vast majority that makes nice projects that don’t get posted here.

i’ve been using uhmw tape… seems to work pretty well, but i need to buy more of it. one roll isn’t enough to cover the bottom of the sled, even with some gaps.

why would you need to cover the entire bottom of the sled? if you just cover the circumference of the circular sled that shold be fine

I’ve actually been using Teflon spray on the plywood with good results fwiw!

Teflon is a trade marked name for PTFE plastic. I’m pretty sure “Teflon spray” is just a gimmick, dont’ really think it is plastic that is being squirted out. UMHW is more durable then Teflon and about the same cost so that is the best plastic to use

remember there are something like 5-7k kits out there, the fact that there are
so few people posting about their problems is promising.

according to this post actually around 3000 kits. Shipment live update!

That’s still a lot :slight_smile: