Can you cut your own half plates?

[thestateofmay]

Feel like that's totally doable depending on plate material and the tools you have. There's so many gasket mounted boards I'd love if they provided half plates, but they don't, so I'm now considering cutting my own pc half plate out of the full ones.

[yui]

i do not see why you could not, not the easiest thing to do probably but i so not see anything preventing you from doing so, especially if you have a copping saw or cnc router on hand

[-Jerry-]

I mean, a half plate is just a full plate with a bit cut out, so sure, no reason why it’s not logically possible. I’d probably want to try it on a cheap plate first, mind you, but you can’t probably just compare pictures of existing half plates and work out where to place the cuts and trust that whoever did those plates did adequate testing of feel, hehe.

[Leslieann]

People have hand cut entire plates with jigsaws coping saws and files, it's not difficult just super tedious. I wouldn't recommend that, a half plate maybe but a full plate, no thanks.

If you want a simpler way, start with an aftermarket plate and cut out what you don't want.


As for cnc router, it was what I built mine for (600x600x100mm MPCNC).
It's currently in parts, I need a place to run it (it's loud A.F.) and I want to rebuild it better, I wasn't that impressed with the quality.

[tp4tissue]

(600x600x100mm MPCNC).

It's hard to get great finishes on metal, or rather, our expectation of a good metal finish, because of how large a plane it is, along with the lack of rigidity.

For modification of this style, if possible Solid steel rods machined and lapped on a lathe would greatly improve rigidity. <prolly need bigger motors for faster rapids>

The MDF base plate is decently stable, buhhhhhh if it's attached to regular 2b4 frames the frame will introduce warp to the mdf,  and when you're dealing with wood, it'll easily warp in complicated axes where you can't shim out perfectly from the work piece. So an ALL-mdf cabinet will be more stable.

Then there's always temp and humidity control, because mdf is still wood w/ plastic binder.

A seperate/ semi-sacrificial laminated plastic mounting plate would also improve tolerance.

[Leslieann]

It's hard to get great finishes on metal, or rather, our expectation of a good metal finish, because of how large a plane it is, along with the lack of rigidity.

For modification of this style, if possible Solid steel rods machined and lapped on a lathe would greatly improve rigidity. <prolly need bigger motors for faster rapids>

Yes, lapping the rods would help, but if you have the machinery to lap 800mm long tubes, you probably aren't going to 3d print a cnc router when you have that kind of equipment. As for the motors, considering you can really only cut at 12-20mm/s high speed is not really a concern. I knew the rods were going to suck, for most of what I wanted to do it wasn't a big deal and I could easily do a clean up, it was the rest of the design I was less than impressed with. I'll leave it at that.

I have lots of linear railing and wheels so I can come up with something a lot more stout and precise, which is the plan once I know I have a place I can use it. Seriously, it's amazingly loud even when not cutting. I considered a water cooled motor but those are about 10x what I have invested in the entire machine so far.