M4 frame without a spoilboard. Bad idea?

Hardware Frame
1

I’d like a frame to be more portable & storable and I’m considering to drop the spoilboard. I understand that the spoilboard adds stiffness, but assuming the frame design was stiff enough without it & the frame material (pine wood) was OK for the router bit to chop into, any reason not to just connect the work piece straight onto a frame? I was thinking maybe it might effect the cut quality (chips on the back of ply) not to have a backing? Obviously chopping up the frame constantly is a downside. So what do you think? Worth trying a frame without a spoilboard?

2

Should be no problem and believe this has been done before and discussed here too. After some use your support studs may need to replacing though.

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3

A spoil board also supports the parts you are cutting so they dont fall away. If you are cutting small peices that could be good that the fall out the back. But if you are cutting bigger things you could have trouble with chatter from the peice being free underneath

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4

Use use tabs in your process to avoid pieces dropping out

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5

As said above, the biggest issue is that you’re turning your frame into the spoil board. If you never cut all the way through material, this is a non issue (save for accidents).

I’m using the 4x8 recommended spoil board as a mounting surface and using cheaper, softer, material on top of even that to reduce long term expenses and make it so I don’t have to replace the 4x8 sheet unless I really mess up.

I’m actually using strips of hardboard both as spoil material and stand offs to keep my work piece off my mounting board and protect it by never cutting more than half that material’s thickness past my work piece.

You could likely get away with doing similar by just putting thin strips over the frame pieces to give them a buffer. All that said, you’re still running into the issue with not having the material supported unless it’s larger than the gaps between your two frame pieces and having a much harder time putting support material for the sled around the workpiece if you need to.

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6

Shops that sell bulk boxes will sell you a 4x8 of cardboard that would make a fine spoil board…

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7

Thanks for the feedback, guys!

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