The only half inch stock I had was poplar, so that’s what I used. I don’t know how it’s going to work, but I am eventually going to make them out of either oak, or plastic. Anyway I think they turned out ok.
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If you “dogbone” the corners of the nut hole, you might be able to avoid using the tiny end-mill, I’ve had that work before. I really like what you did here, could you share your files?
1 Like
I also would like the files. Very nice hold downs…
They look very similar to the Carbide 3D tutorial clamps:
c.f.,
thanks Will. You Are #1
Gotta use what ya got!!! Having said that Poplar isn’t the bestest, it’s pretty soft. Side effect of being soft though it that when you run your spindle into it (and you will eventually), it won’t do as much damage. I’ve used wood, and plastic, and just a week or so ago went with 1/4" 6061 T651 aluminum plate. The plastic ones I made gave up at random times, but there’s literally a gazillion types of plastic and some may work better than others. Oak or some other hard wood, like Ash would be better. The plus side of using the aluminum that I finally used is that I could make my clamps thinner and lower profile. I will attach my VCarve file here. I used the 1/8" ZrN coated 2 flute end mills sold here at C3D. The extra holes in my VCarve file are drill holes for screwing the 8"x8" aluminum plate to my bed before I cut these. The holes in the ends are to be tapped with a 1/4-20 tap.
clamps.zip (387.0 KB)
Dan
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so far so good with the poplar. I have used the heck out of them, and no breakage yet.
I ran one over doing a job the other day, but it’s a job I have to do multiples of, so I use
the same hold down in the same spot for it, and now it glides through the already present
channel cut into it the first time. 
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“Custom Clamp”, nice!
Poplar is definitely not the worst, and at 1/2" thick should be fairly stout. If you were using something like Pine that likes to split randomly I’d be a little worried.
Dan
To make multiple clamps, try the Copy Array command. You create one clamp, create all your vectors, then do the copy array to create as many rows and columns of the part as you want. It is really handy and saves a ton of time.
Will, made 2 sets of hold downs.thanks again for file.
any chance of getting these exported as a dxf. aspire 8.5 won’t open the crv file.
thanks