Alphabet Soup????

[Tyler Howell]

HPVLAC:confused: , HVAPL:mad: , ....... ABCD Plastic Stuff.:o

First:
What is the proper acronym?
What does it stand for?
Any rules for milling?
A Sailing client wants one of these made from these! I couldn't talk him into some nice oak, teak, or mahogany to match the boat.
Simple enough, but I wanted to check before gumming up my tools with this wonder of chemical science.
Router speed important?? BS or TS ? Type Blade??

I know, I've used up my share of questions for the week.
Thanks;)

[Jim Dunn]

Looks like marble? Maybe a diamond blade.

[Dean Baumgartner]

Tyler,

Do you have any better guess what the material actually is? I might be able to give you a little better idea.

From my experience I would be very careful with a router unless you make short cuts before it can heat up too much and start to melt DAMHIKT. But within that limit and running as low a speed as you can even if you have to make multiple passes with cooling time in between you can rout it. For straight cuts I've done ok with the TS. Again it's the heat buildup. Band saw only if you can get a very heavy set on a blade to keep down the friction on the trailing edge of the blade. I've actually had BS and even scroll saw re-weld the material on the backside of the cut.
On the other hand, some of your shiny neander tools can probably work this quite well and unless you're much faster than I am heating shouldn't be a problem either.


Dean

[Steve Jenkins]

Tyler, is that the superslick plastical type stuff like Delryn?
maybe UHMW plastic . Stands for Ultra High Molecular Weight. In other words really slippery and hard.
Cuts great with regular router and table saw type tools and if you need to just shave it for a no-slop fit your hand plane will work great.

[Bruce Page]

Tyler, with all the tapped & counter-bored holes etc, this is more suited for a machine shop. As Dean said, we need a little more info on what material it is, it looks like it might be black Delrin. Dean’s advice on cutter speeds and overheating is also spot-on, most plastic type materials don’t machine well at high speeds unless the cutter/blade is being flooded with coolant.

This is how I would go about it using woodshop tools; I would rough all of the straight cuts on the band saw leaving ~ 1/16” per side and finish up with the table saw. I would also use the TS For the dados, sneaking up on the final dimensions. The router is probably your only option for the edge radiuses unless you have a corner rounding hand plane. Run the router rpm as slow as possible and take light cuts with a medium-fast feed rate. Match drill the holes using alignment blocks in the dados. A forstner bit should work well for the counter bored holes.