Face Plates

[Bruce Smith]

While surfing the web to-day I ran across an advertisement for Revol Face Plates, seems they are fabricated from polymeric material. I would be interested to know if anyone has had any experience with them. Thanks in advance.

[Tom Sherman]

Bruce while I do not have any experience with Polymeric face plates, I think I would not be inclined to use them except for things like sanding plates for the lathe. An awful lot of stress can be applied to a face plate, I don't think I would trust them.

[Bernie Weishapl]

I have to agree with Tom. As much pressure as is put on a piece of wood plus some of those hunks being out of round. I can't say as I would have a warm fuzzy using them.

[George Tokarev]

Disagree. By comparison to the potmetal or zinc monstrosities out there, this is a paragon of strength. The thickness is easily three times the average of even a good steel plate, which means the material holding the shanks is loaded at one third the force/unit of area. Betting the threads are still the weak link, or, to be more precise, the wood the threads are trying to hold. Beat it up radially instead of cutting axially, and the threads will let go.

I didn't look up the strength of the materials versus steel for comparison purposes for that reason.

[John Hart]

Yeah...I'd have to agree that the screws and the wood would still be the point of failure. If the stress caused the grip to loosen somewhat, you might experience some tearing of the plastic at the screwholes....but then, you probably don't want to continue turning with loose screws anyway.

I was thinking a while back about turning my own plastic glue block faceplates and checked in to some materials. I figure just about any of the semi-rigid plastics would work ok. Plexiglass would be out due to its tendency to shatter though.