I’m hoping to make a thing on the Boxford soon, and just checking whether a method is likely to work out well or badly…
The part I want to make is 40x40x12mm. I have a blank 102x102x12.4mm aluminium plate. (no big deal if only one side can be faced off).
If I completely recreate the induction part process, I would place the part somewhere within the blank, do drilling, do a facing pass, then mill the edges leaving tabs.
This will make the part at least 40mm+(diameter of endmill x2)+arbitrary extra waste wide – I certainly couldn’t get 4 pieces out of the blank L
I was very impressed by how well the blue tape, rubbed down and glued back to back, actually worked.
BUT – is it strong enough that I could get away with cutting out a 42x42mm square as marked, deburring it, and just tape+gluing that to the sacrificial piece, and be able to mill the edges without it lifting off?
On the one hand I could understand if that’s too much to ask of it – as the aspect ratio is higher than for the induction piece – but on the other hand the amount of material being removed from the edges would be <1mm and it could be done in multiple shallow passes. This would also be way easier for clearing chips.
The only worry is whether the adhesion of the blue tape is enough? I’d be sure to maximise the adhesion – clean with IPA, rub down the tape all the way to the edges and have good coverage of superglue.
I feel that’s likely to be OK but I want to check in before I go ahead.
If not… part of my design involves holes drilled into the square surface – so to augment the blue tape, after I drill these 3mm holes, I could additionally drill a 2.65mm hole down into the sacrificial piece, tap that to M3, and screw bolts down into it before doing the edges… it’s an extra step but not much extra bother.
Any experienced views on this?
Alex Gibson
+44 7813 810 765 @alexgibson3d 37 Royal Avenue, Reading RG31 4UR
admg consulting
edumaker limited
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