It's been a couple of rough years trying to get through some illness and dealing with a day job that seemed intent on consuming all aspects of my life. In the interim, my 1010 machine sat idle and my first attempt at a rolling table for it sagged under the load. Things are finally coming back together. I fixed the sagging issue for the table by going from a 2-piece top to a 1-piece top from 3/4" Melamine double-sided board. Under that, I put in 4 steel crossbar reinforcements cut from overhead electrical routing bar that you can get at Menards. Then I screwed that assembly to the rolling bench top with 6 SPAX construction screws. It is not going to droop now, by goodness. When I did a video on adding new side bars to make my 1010 a little higher, someone had asked how I did my slot table. The short answer is, "Don't do it the way I did it. It was a failure." I had started with a 3/4" MDF board and then actually used a router to cut slots the depth of the T-slot bars I'd gotten from Amazon. The completely jacked up the structural rigidity of the MDF and resulted in the slot table bowed, which resulted in shallow cuts going in and out of material. So, this time around, I still went with 3/4" MDF, but I did not cut the material for the T-slot bars. Instead, I installed them directly on top of the MDF, no glue or anything, just the screws that came with the bars. Initially, when I check the flatness, I through, "Well, the board must be bowled," because the straightedge showed a gap of almost 2-3 mm in the center. After I did my new bench top, though, I checked the flatness again with a better straightedge (a machined bar level). Wonder of wonders, there was no gap where before there had been a lot. I went back and checked the "straight" edge I was using and found that it was not straight at all. Anyway, I have reinstalled the T-slot tracks and will now be moving on to doing the tool boards for my EPP model airplane parts.
Darwin, I don't know what you plan to cut on your machine but I suspect that you will not be happy with the T-slot setup you ended up with. If you will try to cut small parts it will be a nightmare to do. You may want to consider putting some plywood/MDF filler between the T-slot to mitigate the problem. The T-slots can be a bit lower than the filler.
You are correct if I was planning on putting work pieces directly on the T-slots. However, my setup is intended for use with dedicated tool boards that clamp to the slots on the left and then are clamped using T-slot lever clamps on the right. Work pieces will be secured to the tool boards, which will be MDF based to allow for cut-through. I will be using T-slot spacers on the bottom of the tools boards to make sure that I have solid material clamping on the right side when securing the tool boards. This will also allow me to surface the tool boards to ensure that they are true and square to the tool head before cutting parts. As reference, my CNC will be cutting primarily EPP foam and corrugated plastic parts. These parts are to be secured to the tool boards with double-sided woodworker's tape since the materials do not lend themselves to clamping. This will require me to apply melamine sheeting to the working area of the tool boards after they are surfaced so that removing the tape between jobs will not damage the board.
Turns out that melamine sheet isn't as easy to find as it once was. I am going to try using this board as-flattened with the double sided tape and see what happens. May hit it with a coat of clear lacquer first. Weirdly, board was bowed upward when I started, bridging across the T-slots, which I had verified as flat before starting. After taking off the finished surface, the board relaxed into contact with all of the T-slots.
Proof that the tool board works. First PECV5 front fuselage of 2024. However, 2022 Darwin didn't finish the CNC program for production so instead of (2) fuselage fronts, I got (1). CURSE YOU 2022 DARWIN!
what 2022 Darwin should have done is create metadata, data about the data (-: I use README files, put the gcode into a folder and a README file that tells future me what it is for and how to set it up.
Right you are, David. Thankfully, you set things up to let me know what files I'd combined to get my cut files, so I can re-create things for a double fuselage cut, but putting in personalized info would have been very helpful. It would have also helped if I hadn't walked away for so long due to other things. Re-learning seems to be a meme of my life.
