Greetings! Newbie here. I am this close to purchasing a Shapeoko XXL, for an important project. (And of course, the Shapeoko will live on in my shop as a great prototyping/production tool after my project is finished.)
Anyway, I’m trying to find a solution for cutting lots and lots of these hexagons and rhombus shapes, likely out of 6mm (1/4”) Baltic Birch.
I’m trying to avoid tabs if at all possible… and since the shapes are rather small, I’m also wondering if a custom vacuum table is in order. (And if it would even work with shapes that small?) I also have some ideas for creative clamping that might work, but I am curious if any of you have machined anything remotely similar?
I’ll likely engrave some patterns just into the surface of the Baltic Birch, then cut out the perimeter of the shapes with a different end mill.
You veterans of the Shapeoko, is the repeatability pretty reliable with this hardware? I’m trying to keep my tolerance between 1/64” and 1/32”…
Tommy, I would recommend the CA glue and tape method for holding the material to the table. If you put the tape at the right place (under the shape), you should not need tabs. One issue you may encounter is that the thin plywood may not be perfectly touching everywhere, especially in the middle if you use clamps on the side. If this is an issue, I use a pin nailer and drive a few pins in the high spots. The pin nails are so small that they will not be damaging the endmill and are virtually invisible in your patterns but you have to pull them out of the wasteboard or find a way to cut them flush.
If your machine is well setup and maintained, you should not have any issue with repeatability and 1/64 is well within the tolerances.
There was a vacuum table design posted to the Shapeoko forums a while back: https://wiki.shapeoko.com/index.php/Workholding#Vacuum and a similar one ingeniously modified to use small holes which could be occluded by airsoft pellets.
Repeatability is well within your requirements - holding within a few thousandths isn’t unreasonable with some effort at setup. I’ve made about 200 catan tiles with 3d surfaces, works quite well. I -did- use tabs, about 1/16" tall, 1/8" wide.
