OK, I’m tired of tearing up my waist board and filling in with wood putty. I’m using quarter inch MDF under each one of my projects. so When it cuts below on a contour cut it goes into the new primary now was board. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before.![]()
I have an SO3 XXL. I do not have the t-track but just a simple mdf spoilboard with 1/4-20 tee nuts. I recently did surface my spoilboard after a year since I last replaced it. The whole spoilboard was not cut up but I did a project that cut into my spoilboard so I surfaced it.
My point is I primarily use bottom of material. I seldom if ever cut through my projects or leave an onion skin I have to remove. It is a different work flow but it keeps your spoilboard in really good shape. I usually have projects with cut outs held down with painters tape and super glue. So I do have a small sandwich of tape between the project and spoilboard.
Try using bottom of material to see if you like it. I use top of material only on jobs that will not cut through.
I have not tried that. Thanks.
I put prices of card stock under material keep from spoiling my spoilboard.
Yes, I have also used card stock. ![]()
One concern with using paper is that the brightening compounds are often abrasive and will wear the sharpness of an endmill.
I started with a 3/4" piece of MDF (it’s gotten thinner with subsequent surfacing passes) secured via the tracks on my 5.
A lot of what I do is arbitrary 1/8" aluminum or polycarb for my FIRST Robotics team and that makes it easy to secure the sheets in an ad-hoc manner using whatever hardware or bearing holes there might be as part of the design (sometimes you need a hole or a few to secure it depending on the design). Coarse pan head construction screws in 1/2" and 5/8" length work pretty well for what I’m doing there. With a solid spoilboard like that, I don’t have to be concerned with where the holes in the part might be relative to a slot on the bed - they can be pretty much anyplace. I use an old chisel and a sanding pad to knock down whatever material gets pulled up from the screws when things are done and it’s been working pretty well for me.
It works great for those operations but the “no free lunch” part is I gave up the T-slots which becomes a pain for other operations - ugh.
2x4 is probably large enough for most of the flat parts we need to cut so at some point, I might only cover half the bed in this way.
