El Beast - Initial design phase, comments and critique welcomed!

[Zeeflyboy]

Did a little more work, haven't finished these side plates yet but thought I'd show where I'm up to.... they still need milling on the underside but I haven't quite decided how I'm going to do that yet.

So first up I just whizzed out some inserts from 0.6mm matte finish carbon fibre. Normally I would cut submerged but given it was such a thin piece and an extremely quick job I just used the vac with hepa bag and hepa filter.

For cutting CF I only ever really used double sided tape. Works very well and the waterproof variety doesn't mind being submerged...






Out of interest I get asked occasionally what I use for cutting CF - my favourites are these diamond coated fishtail burrs from BZT




So given that these side plates were going to be awkward to hold down without using a larger piece of alu and leaving tabs in I thought I would try something I read about online. I have in the past used double sided tape to hold down parts but the tape either tends to be a bitch to remove the part and clean up the residue or too weak and all types I have tried have allowed too much movement in the part which then leads to vibration of the part during cutting.

I saw someone do this and thought I would give it a go since these parts aren't particularly critical! My only reservation was that it might all go horribly wrong while using coolant, but I dialled back the mist to a bare minimum and it seemed to work fine.

So the basic idea is that you lay down some strips of masking tape on to the part and then lay corresponding pieces down onto the bed.




You then put a little superglue on the top of the tape and while lining it all up, push the plate down firmly into place. I turned the tape on the plate over the top to make it easy to line up before then removing the excess once it was stuck down.






I was actually very surprised at how firmly the plate was held in place - no wiggle like you can get from double sided tape. Anyway, proof is in the pudding as they say and it worked exceptionally well.... sounded great when cutting and the chips didn't dance on the surface as they do when using normal tape, suggesting the part wasn't able to vibrate. One day I will need to make myself a nice vacuum setup but one project at a time!




Before removing the plates I just checked the fit of the inserts in case anything needed tweaking but they were a perfect fit




CF plate isn't stuck down yet, just resting in place so it's not sitting perfectly flat for those with keen eyes:




So anyway, next up I need to mill the underside and then print the side seals...