Hello, I’m back with a question. But first of all, I want to thank everyone on this forum for being so awesome. Between you guys and Carbide’s support, I had a great experience when setting up my shapeoko, despite the hiccups.
With that being said, I have a silly question. When using double sided tape on the shapeoko 4’s slatted wasteboard, will their be enough surface area to adhere to my substrate? Should I put the double sided tape down on the wasteboard and press the wood to it? I’m going to run my first series of practice jobs with 3/4 mdf but I want to cutout some shapes and didn’t know if it could cut it out shapes without an issue if the entire piece of wood is held down with tape vs just the edge using clamps.
I use the blue tape and CA glue method and it’s rock solid and peels up without damage to the wasteboard or the project. also no need for tabs if you’re cutting something out
You can make through cuts without tabs with either the blue tape/CA glue or double sided tape method as long as you have good coverage of the areas.
Also good to note that when cutting through using the aforementioned methods, you may want to offset the cut depth so you don’t cut into the tape as it tends to gum up the cutter - not a death sentence but it requires more clean up.
^^^ A good means of getting that offset bang on is by putting that same tape on the top surface for zeroing Z (if you are zeroing that way). Then just remove the tape before letting chips fly
I use the bottom side as zero and leave the 2 layers of tape sticking out the side for me to set the zero from. I can then reliably cut through the bottom of the stock and less than the first layer of tape.
Holy cow, I used waaaay too many strips of tape on the MDF I cut. I tried to remove it with a plastic paint scraper and broke it haha. I now know how strong that stuff is.
This worked great! Thank you for that suggestion. I had no issues cutting through the material, didn’t cut into the wasteboard at all, and didn’t have any gunk end up on my bit!
If you do get the bit gunked (or when) some Isopropanol or some tool cleaner will get it clean again quickly and ready for the next cut. The tool cleaner is worth keeping around for getting wood resin off saws and things anyway.
I use 1/2" MDF wasteboard on top of the slotted surface that I flatten (after zero-ing Z with the bitsetter I take off .010), and held down with four clamps along the edges. Then blue painter’s tape with CA (tape on the waste board, tape on the cut piece, CA on the waste board tape around the border and a cross, then accelerator on the cut piece tape). I’ve never had a cut piece lift or slide, and I’ve cut hardwoods and non-ferrous metals on my Shapeoko. And the pieces always lift off with a metal putty knife.
