JimG
Western Thunderer
In my adventures with CNC milling I came across this product which might be of use to others. Cynric had pointed me at a supplier for Rowmark sheet. I decided to stick with styrene sheet, but I noted that the supplier offered a mat especially for holding material for engraving and milling. So I managed to visit the supplier in Bristol to have a look at the product and I finished up getting a square foot of it to try out. And it works superbly.
I had been using double sided tape to hold the Plastikard sheet on the milling table. It did the job very well but releasing the fairly fragile styrene sheet after the milling could be a pretty difficult job since the adhesive on the sticky tape worked too well and I was distorting the styrene when I was parting it from the tape. I managed to try out the Seklema Multimat on the milling machine at the end of last week and it worked really well. It held the styrene sheet very firmly and I got no movement problems after a three hour milling session. Getting the finished part off the sheet was simplicity itself. I just started at one corner and it peeled off with no distortion to the material.
Here's a picture of the product
[attachimg=1]
The mat is approximately 2.5mm thick and is double sided. It is not cheap - I paid £55 + VAT for one square foot.
But it is supposed to have a long life if treated well and the makers state that the surface has a certain amount of self healing which would repair any slight damage from cutting tools. It cleans with a damp cloth or sponge.
[attachimg=2]
This is a picture of the mat in use on my milling machine. A three inch wide strip was cut to fit on the Contiboard table on the machine. I would have liked to have stuck the sheet directly on to the milling machine's table, but the KX1 mill doesn't have the lower "Z" range to allow this with small, short end mills, even with an ER25 collet holder in the spindle.
Others might find some other uses for the product. Although I haven't experimented yet, I suspect that the work piece being stuck to the mat has to have an element of flexibility to allow it to be removed. I suspect that a rigid flat piece could not be removed without damage to the mat - hence my reluctance to experiment. ;D
The supplier is http://www.identify.co.uk/index.html but I can't find the product on their web site at the moment. They have just been taken over by Trotec and they were in the middle of a changeover to a different accounts procedure when I was there, so things were in a state of controlled chaos.
I reckon the best thing would be to phone them if you wanted to get some of the mat.
Jim.
I had been using double sided tape to hold the Plastikard sheet on the milling table. It did the job very well but releasing the fairly fragile styrene sheet after the milling could be a pretty difficult job since the adhesive on the sticky tape worked too well and I was distorting the styrene when I was parting it from the tape. I managed to try out the Seklema Multimat on the milling machine at the end of last week and it worked really well. It held the styrene sheet very firmly and I got no movement problems after a three hour milling session. Getting the finished part off the sheet was simplicity itself. I just started at one corner and it peeled off with no distortion to the material.
Here's a picture of the product
[attachimg=1]
The mat is approximately 2.5mm thick and is double sided. It is not cheap - I paid £55 + VAT for one square foot.
But it is supposed to have a long life if treated well and the makers state that the surface has a certain amount of self healing which would repair any slight damage from cutting tools. It cleans with a damp cloth or sponge.[attachimg=2]
This is a picture of the mat in use on my milling machine. A three inch wide strip was cut to fit on the Contiboard table on the machine. I would have liked to have stuck the sheet directly on to the milling machine's table, but the KX1 mill doesn't have the lower "Z" range to allow this with small, short end mills, even with an ER25 collet holder in the spindle.
Others might find some other uses for the product. Although I haven't experimented yet, I suspect that the work piece being stuck to the mat has to have an element of flexibility to allow it to be removed. I suspect that a rigid flat piece could not be removed without damage to the mat - hence my reluctance to experiment. ;D
The supplier is http://www.identify.co.uk/index.html but I can't find the product on their web site at the moment. They have just been taken over by Trotec and they were in the middle of a changeover to a different accounts procedure when I was there, so things were in a state of controlled chaos.
I reckon the best thing would be to phone them if you wanted to get some of the mat.Jim.
