Fluffy mdf

[Shinobiwan]

I'm a bit late to the party here but do have a long running love hate relationship with MDF. Love it because its cheap, hate it because its cheap! lol

As others have said, the furring is because B&Q supply cardboard badged up as MDF - yes its really that bad. Complete junk and I'd avoid it at all costs, I've never got a decent edge finish from this stuff yet.

Medite is ok at the budget end though thickness's above 25mm do have a rather mushy core and again you'll get some furring but nothing like as bad as B&Q rubbish. At the top end you have Valchromat and I love this stuff. Zero furring, retains very small details and can be sanded smooth - almost like plastic when sanded upto 1200 grit. Its expensive though at £80 for 25mm thick 8x4ft sheet.

For reference I mostly cut at 7m/min 11,000rpm and 100% cutter diameter for DOC. Use carbide tooling and you can get amazing tool life, not sure how long exactly but a few months of use almost day in day out for me in MDF. Key to increasing tool life is keep your rpm low and your feedrates high.

[nbowes]

I have cnc and manual routers. to do away with fluff on any material, I use down cutters whenever I can. feed speed max my cnc will do is 70 in per min.

[Boyan Silyavski]

Old discussion but here is my experience. Yes there is a kind of cheap MDF which is fluffy and generally very bad quality for work. I would say impossible.

Once i did 100 pieces , some lamp bases, for a friend and all was ok. Next time they bought the crappy material. OMG, it was a disaster.

Side by side before machining it was lighter in color and not so glossy as the real MDF. In short the best MDF i have found here in Spain is the darkest in color and the smoothest to the touch that gives you a glassy like feeling. And yes, from MDF to MDf there is a big difference even in one shop