Thinking of making my first sled out of UHMW plastic

Hardware Sled
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I am a noob - my Maslow is still sitting in it’s box. I’m doing mental planning…

I was thinking about the sled - seems there’s some discussion about friction. I can guess that it’s bets to be in the Goldilocks zone -vis-a-vis- friction. So I’m wondering if UHMW plastic, about 3/4" thick would be a good sled surface.

Does anyone have any experience with UHMW plastic as a sled surface?

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I use a piece of 1/8" thick UHMW as the sole of my 1/2" plywood sled, it works great. I think the plywood adds stiffness.

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I’m with you there. I paid a visit to my local cabinet shop, and talked them into gifting me with a scrap of Corian™ solid-surface countertop material. It’s 22" x 23" x 1/2", and extremely dense. I think it may be a polymer-ceramic hybrid? I’ll be making a sled from it this week. I have an idea for mounting the parts in alignment the first time:

  1. Use the router baseplate as a template to drill mounting holes for the router.
  2. With the router base mounted, chuck a 45deg v-groove bit in the router, and plunge the router slowly into the material just enough to make a small dimple in the sled stock.
  3. dismount the router base, and use the center dimple with a compass to lay out the ring and brick mounting holes.
  4. drill out the dimple into a 1/8" hole, and use it with a Jenson circle jig to cut the 18" outer circumference.
  5. use a 2" holesaw to enlarge the center hole for bit and chip clearance.
  6. Mount the router, ring and bricks.
  7. Balance the completed sled on a chain, determine the height of the CG, and proceed to align the top bar and motor mounts accordingly.
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