I'm continuing to make slow but steady progress. I have been installing the update rack spacers that Nate at FineLine sent out to me last week (Thanks, Nate!!), and getting hte rest of my motors installed. Last night I started routing the wires from the control box to the motors through the cable chains. I hope to get these all cut to length and connectorized this week.
In the meantime, I am starting to think about the spoil board setup. I received an early version of the system from before they started drilling holes for spoil boards, so I need to drill the holes (not really looking forward to that, but that's life). I am considering using rivnuts instead of tapping the holes, and I wondered if anyone had any thoughts about that. The biggest downside I can think of is that the rivnut will sit above the surface of the frame a little, causing the spoil board to have a gap. I was considering possibly using caulk to fill the gap between screws and support the spoil board. For that matter, is there any reason to not just glue the spoil board down with a silicone adhesive? My thinking is that I will have two layers of MDF anyway...One that is semi-permanent and a second top layer that gets replaced as needed. The top layer would get screwed into the bottom layer then surfaced for flatness. I suppose I could also surface the bottom layer for flatness as well, and MAYBE not need to surface the top layer every time I replace it. When the bottom layer needs replacing, it would probably be garbage anyway, so I could just pull it up in pieces, scrape off the old caulk and glue down another piece.
A second question is provisions for hold-downs. I've seen alot of people using t-slot track, and I've seen people just put some number of threaded inserts in for hold-down clamps. I am looking for flexibility. This isn't a production machine, and I will be doing a pretty wide variety of work including 3D carving (Carved top guitars, necks, furniture). What works well for people?
Thanks,
Robert