Making .015" sheet stock into .010" and .005"

[Robert Ray]

Is there a planer or drum sander that can reduce the thickness of sheet material from .015" to .010" and .005" thick?

The material is called Lazerboard, and it's MSDS says polyurea and cellulose fiber, but it looks like thick paper and sands very smooth without generating any fibers. It comes in 12" x 24" sheets, and is fairly hard.

Since it is only available in the one thickness, and I have use for several thicknesses of the stuff, I want a tool that can take it down. I would also like to use the tool to take down 1/32" finish birch plywood, which I have measured anywhere from .031" to .037" down to .030" thick.

I have looked at a few planers, and they seem to be designed for thicker materials, and I know nothing of the drum sanders capabilities available.

Thanks in advance,
Robert Ray

[Chris Padilla]

I don't see why a drum sander (I have a Delta 18-36 open end) couldn't take material down to 1/32" assuming the drum is set dead parallel (easy enough to do) to the table but I have not tried it with mine. I regularly sand down to 1/16" with excellent results.

[Robert Ray]

So I could probably just get one of these tools, with the finest sandpaper drum they offer, and set the depth down to do the job? Do most of these tools allow the sanding drum to be adjusted till it almost touches the table, say allowing a .005" gap?

I just checked in here after reading a review about another "thickness sander" someone is selling that can get down to .008", which would work except it only has a 6" wide drum, and I would think I need a 13" drum for 12" wide material.

-Robert

[david kramer]

So I could probably just get one of these tools, with the finest sandpaper drum they offer, and set the depth down to do the job? Do most of these tools allow the sanding drum to be adjusted till it almost touches the table, say allowing a .005" gap?

-Robert

That's awfully tight tolerance, even for a drum sander. I know I wouldn't trust my drum sander (Performax 16/32) to do that job. I assume that you're going to attach this stuff to some other ply, so you might want to do the glue up first, and then sand/plane to the desired thickness. The glue may well throw the measurement off by a few thou, particularly if this stuff swells when the glue hits it.

Put another way, why do you need it to be 0.005"? I often need two pieces to be the same thickness, but rarely do I need them to be an exact thickness. So I plane/sand the two pieces at the same time until they're the "correct" thickness. Even if I don't know what correct is, or get it exactly right, they match.

David

[Chris Padilla]

So I could probably just get one of these tools, with the finest sandpaper drum they offer, and set the depth down to do the job? Do most of these tools allow the sanding drum to be adjusted till it almost touches the table, say allowing a .005" gap?

I just checked in here after reading a review about another "thickness sander" someone is selling that can get down to .008", which would work except it only has a 6" wide drum, and I would think I need a 13" drum for 12" wide material.

-Robert

Robert, I kinda doubt they would work well to such a small gap. I suppose if you lucked out with a drum that was extremely well-balanced but I don't know.

The open-ended drum sanders like Jet/Performax and Delta sell all have a "sandpaper" like conveyor belt that pulls the wood through the sanding head. The conveyor belt rides on top of a cast iron table so you might guess that this belt does not lie perfectly flush with the table so that may make it more difficult to sand so thin like you are thinking. Also, there could be enough flex in the open-end sander to make sanding uniformly to such thinness difficult. I just don't think these sanders were made to sand so thing but like I said, I've never gone below 1/16" although I feel confident I could sand to 1/32" even with my 100 grit on the drum.

That brings up another points: the sandpaper around the drum. I dunno how much it really "sticks" to the drum to reach your desired thinness.

Can you share why you needs to sand your items so thin? I'm very curious

[mike holden]

Robert,
Depending on how wide you want your stock to be, you should look into something called the "Luthiers Friend". This is a sander set up in a drill press for making thin and consistent stock for making musical instruments. this is the most accurate sanding setup I know of.
Mike

[Bruce Page]

Almost anything’s possible given enough time and money. That said, I think that after the time and money is spent you will still have much less than 50% success rate, if any success at all. (I hope the Lazerboard material is really cheap).
.005 is about the thickness of a sheet of paper. The only way that I can see to hold something that thin without it bulging up or being spit out would be with some sort of vacuum sled fixture and a tricked-out drum sander. Just as an fyi, I checked out my old Delta 18-36 when I first got it, the drum’s concentricity was out .004, and I thought that was pretty darn good considering the machine’s overall cost saving design.
.004 is enough to ruin your day if you’re trying to sand .005 sheet.

Save your money and try to adjust the other side of the equation

JMHO

[Peter Quinn]

I have a performax pro 22-44, i use a pretty good wide belt at work, neither machine is capable of sanding material to within .0001" over 12", which is what I would assume you are going for if you hope to achieve .005" thickness +- over 12" sheets. The performax takes off roughly .007" per pass, the jack screw is simply not fine enough to allow more precise adjustments. There is also probably .003"-.005" variation from end to end on the drum sander. I think few wood working machines I have used will work within the tolerances you are considering, and planers are definitely out for material that thin. They will chew it up and spit it out.

It would be great if you knew somebody with a drum sander that you could experiment with to see if it suits your needs before purchasing one. I don't think any mechanical sander will process material that thin as they come. You would need to make a backer board, something like a sheet of 3/4" mdf with perhaps 180G PSA sand paper adhered to form a flat substrate to move the veneer past the sanding head. I use this technique to get veneer well below 1/32" that would otherwise get crushed going through the sander. The belt on a drum sander is typically too coarse to support material in the .015" range, and the belt on a wide belt is corrugated and will definitely not support material that thin.

In short processing veneer in the 1/32" range is possible with a drum sander and might be easier once glued to a substrate. Material below .015" is going to be difficult to thickness accurately with any wood working machine, and may be difficult to achieve with any method.

[Tom Majewski]

Robert, where are you getting the Lazerboard from. I've been looking for it for a while.

Tom

[george wilson]

The trouble is,sandpaper less than 120 grit just burns in drum sanders. The relatively coarse finish left by 120 paper in those thin sheets probably would preclude it working. If at all,I'd glue one end of the lazerboard down,the end closest to the operator,so the drum tends to pull it tight.Run it through on a pre sanded piece of wood. You'd have to be very careful of adjustments. But then,you'd get the 120 grit finish.

How WIDE are these pieces you need? Can you run them through a jeweler's rolling mill?

[Wes Grass]

I think you'd need a surface grinder with a vacuum chuck on it to go that thin. And that's a big grinder $$$$$

[Rick Fisher]

Its possible to run 150 x 180 on a drum sander. I have done it with few problems.
Right now I am running 120 x 150 on mine.

150 x 180 needs intense dust collection and you have to clean the paper all the time. You also need to take very light passes.

I have sanded D. Fir with great success. I imagine that other woods would make fine paper even trickier.

[Jason White]

Perhaps you could resaw it on a bandsaw? :p


Is there a planer or drum sander that can reduce the thickness of sheet material from .015" to .010" and .005" thick?

The material is called Lazerboard, and it's MSDS says polyurea and cellulose fiber, but it looks like thick paper and sands very smooth without generating any fibers. It comes in 12" x 24" sheets, and is fairly hard.

Since it is only available in the one thickness, and I have use for several thicknesses of the stuff, I want a tool that can take it down. I would also like to use the tool to take down 1/32" finish birch plywood, which I have measured anywhere from .031" to .037" down to .030" thick.

I have looked at a few planers, and they seem to be designed for thicker materials, and I know nothing of the drum sanders capabilities available.

Thanks in advance,
Robert Ray

[Chris Padilla]

Actually, Robert, what you need is a very large handplane to take a 5 mil shaving! Now that I think about it, that is likely what commercial veneer cutters use. :)

[Robert Ray]

Robert, where are you getting the Lazerboard from. I've been looking for it for a while.

Tom


I have been getting my lazerboard from Rich at RSlaser. He gets it from Northeastern Lumber, but they require a large minimum order.

It's $3 a sheet, 12" x 24", but only comes in .015" thickness, and I want it in thinner stock too.

It's great stuff for making models, but I have been hand sanding it with my random orbital to get it down to .010", and I have used my laser to take a 12" x 12" sheet to .005", but that took over an hour and still needed to be sanded afterwards.

-Robert

[Robert Ray]

Can you share why you needs to sand your items so thin? I'm very curious

I use this material for producing Z Scale model railroad products. I laser cut it, but it is only available in .015" thickness so far. .015" x 220 = a scale 3.3" material, and sometimes I need thinner, so I have benn sanding it with a random orbital sander to take it down.

-Robert