We recently got an AVID CNC (4’x8’) at our school, and we are wanting to do machine box tubing on it. Scouring CD has come up mostly short (or has dated, no longer available solutions), so I ask you all - how do you secure your workpiece?
Ideally the solution doesn’t get in the way of machining full sheets of plywood, since that’s a common use of it at our school. I’ve seen some suggestions with clamps like these, or WCP’s jig, but I’m unsure how well that fits our needs, especially with build season being only 3 weeks away.
Our machine has 3 layers of MDF as its work surface, so we’re considering milling out a 2x1 and 1x2 rectangle that the tube can sit in, then clamp or fasten it down from there. Do you all have any suggestions?
We dedicate a portion of a second omio X8 to the WCP jig. From what I can tell, it’s best to fasten it down and never move it, since you’d have to square it up properly each time if you do so.
The WCP jig works great, so maybe you accept that and dedicate a portion of the work surface to the jig, and only cut 4’x7.5’ sheets?
Even with a 2x3 bed, we’ve still sacrificed permanent space for the WCP jig. Our machine is now 19.5"ish x 36" on the main bed, with the jig next to that.
My other big concern is the WCP jig is backordered, and I believe it has been since we got the CNC, and it isn’t even listed as when it will be back in stock, so maybe that’s a next-season improvement.
You can machine something very similar if you have the time. At the end of the day, the WCP jig is a flat piece of material with two perpendicular walls, and a series of holes. You could make the same thing out of a chunk of aluminum or delrin, then drill and tap holes, and have a comparable product. Vises, if you can find some that fit in your machine’s work envelope, will require some fiddling, but should be doable as well.
We DIY’d ours some years ago. We use the CNC to machine holes through our spoiler board and attach an extrusion as a banking surface. The CNC also puts in the toggle clamp mounting holes so it’s pretty quick to setup. We will tram out the extrusion when we setup and we typically leave it up for the season. We’ll limit the sheet size to the other side of the table when this is installed.
We make these in house in batches. If you really needed one urgent I’m sure we have some that aren’t perfect that we could sell less than retail. Shoot us an email [email protected]
Currently we don’t have machine time but that should change soon. Getting our third CNC machine In a week or two (VF4SS!)
Below is a pic of my homegrown method. It is not too fancy but does the trick. It was three drill press vices (something like this)
Then bolted those to a piece of shelf board. Probably not as accurate as some of the more refined versions, but it gets the job done and has served us well for a few years.
We use WCP jig which works great. We doubled the height of our spoil boards so we can leave the jig in place at all times and just machine over it. 2X the spoil board raises the machining plane higher than the jig. So, we gave up some Z, but we have plenty of height that wasn’t being used.
Buy/borrow a dial gauge to install a jig. Also, record the absolute X,Y,Z of the corner (CAM origin). Once you find it…. Don’t lose it.
/s