I’ve got one step left with my Shapeoko enclosure, but the Shapeoko itself is setup and ready for fun.
I went a little overkill on a threaded insert board, and decided I wanted to increase it’s life expectancy so added a polycarbonate top.
The polycarbonate was purchased from lowes for ~$32usd (30"x32"x.08") and I was able to make two tops from the material. So at ~$16usd each, and ~20 minutes to CNC the polycarbonate the numbers look good, but am I overlooking something?
It might increase the noise by acting like a speaker if you don’t bolt it down in several spots and it scratches fairly easy with anything sharp but I am curious to see what happens.
had not thought of that. If a static charge builds in the polycarbonate and transfers to the bit if it is touched. I will look out for that and if I get a disconnect this is probably the cause.
In the brief time I have had the Shapeoko working I have already had a handful of disconnects that were due to the dust collection. But @LiamN has helped me solve those.
Not sure how much you plan to cut into the waste board, but polycarbonate, while aesthetically pleasing, is an expensive material to use as a waste board. Also it is a lot denser than something like MDF so if you accidentally plunge a little too deep you bit/router will not be happy about that. If you are planning to mill mostly above the polycarbonate top, I think its a cool looking and probably a pretty dimensionally stable top.
I don’t intentionally plan on cutting into it, but my “intentions” don’t always match reality.
This idea sprung into my head after investing 90 minutes of CNC time and another 30 minutes of my own time installing threaded inserts. But you guys are finding the flaws in my logic, which is what I wanted to know.
Since I have gotten my HDZ, I have found no reason to cut into my wasteboard. I prefer to keep it clean and level and if I plan to cut through my material, I will clamp additional MDF/Plywood underneath. This was hard to do with height restrictions prior to owning a HDZ.
Big +1 to the expense factor. I don’t know what prices are like where you are but here, 10mm polycarbonate costs 146€/m² while 10mm MDF costs 10.63€/m². Given that, I definitely wouldn’t want to “waste” polycarbonate.
Plus, wood is way more environmentally friendly and easy to dispose of (though that too depends on where you are).
The polycarbonate was purchased from lowes for ~$32usd (30"x36"x.08") and I was able to make two tops from the material. So at ~$16usd each. More expensive than wood, but I thought it was a better overall value due to the time invested into making the threaded insert board.
One thing I was considering wasteboard wise for a while was a puzzle arrangement centered on holes for threaded inserts where the pieces either had, or didn’t have a hole and could be swapped in at need — as pieces were cut into they would get sorted into bins based on how deeply they were gouged — when a bin was full all the pieces would get installed and surfaced.
Obviously didn’t bother, instead I’m back to PVC filler strips w/ spacers limited to the cutting area and which are held in place by a single fastener:
Now I just need to remember the next time I’m inserting the spacer strips to just shave off a bit of the angle rather than drill a new hole.
Ascetically, it looks fantastic. Love the look, but for a wasteboard? It’s a wasteboard because it’s designed to be replaced and surfaced. MDF is super cheap and surfaces quickly.
Besides the cost, you’re also limiting friction from the washboard. You’ll really have to make sure you have multiple contact points with your clamps. I’d nix both the bamboo and the polycarbonate pieces, because of cost, but again, I love the way it looks.
I would cringe every time I accidentally cut into it because it looks so nice, and surfacing it to remove the cuts won’t really work. I have a few more concerns though:
Lack of friction. I don’t know what you cut or how you clamp, but you have no help from your wasteboard here. I often surface 8/4" pieces of hardwood without any clamps or tape at all. I shim the wobble with some old sandpaper discs and let gravity keep it in place while I remove small fractions of an inch to get a flat surface.
Static build up. I’ve used my CNC to level large epoxy inlays and that used to be the only thing that caused a static pause. I say “used” because I fixed that by powering my router from a different breaker and that seemed to fix the problem.
Cost. Not that it’s too expensive to be a wasteboard, but I wanted to make sure you know that PC can be free. You might struggle to find the exact piece or color you’re looking for, but if you keep down this path, contact your local sign shop for scraps before you head over to Lowes. My local Fast Signs franchise gives me all the scrap PC I want.
Great points, I think the conclusion we are all coming to is that this was a bad idea. Not necessarily the decision to put something between the what I will call my threaded insert board and the work piece. The “bad idea” was choosing polycarbonate, which was obviously just for vanity reasons as the bamboo threaded insert board just makes me happy to look at.
If I get a disconnect (static) then this experiment is over. If I have a work part move because it slipped on the polycarbonate then this experiment is over. If neither of those happen then the two polycarbonate tops will last however long they last, then I will move on to whatever my next bad decision is.
I have not tried the blue-tape yet. In my time with the Nomad it was clamps and/or double-sided tape. Just got the Shapeoko setup and will eventually try the blue-tape method.
I will say that regarding two sided tape, it will stick to the polycarbonate much better than to MDF, and a little better than the bamboo. But that tape is a different creature so the results with the blue-tape could be different
Whist observing my awesome success in not grounding my dust boot and how many kg of plastic chips it could hold at one time on the PVC skirt I remembered this stuff that I used at a previous workplace to leave a semi-permanent semiconductive antistatic coating on things. Might be worth a try.
