Wasteboard question

[Michael Hall]

This is from someone pretty new to CNC work, so hopefully my question isn't too idiotic.

I noticed the flycut procedure only lets you go down to about .17 inches, then won't let you flycut anymore. To set up a new wasteboard, you then obviously need a board at least .17 inches.

We have a very large inventory of .096 mdf in various sheet sizes. Is it at all possible to use 2 layers of this to create a new wasteboard rather than special ordering a sheet? Obviously if we have it in-house already it would be pretty convenient to be able to use.

[jason galbraith]

I would like to know also. We run 3mm thick sacrificial boards and would like to just skim them by up to .5mm to get a nice dead flat surface, but we are unable to. Anyway to work around this?

[Scott Marshburn]

we regularly use 3/8" or 5/8" or even 3/4"mdf for our waste boards we just fly cut down at 1/16 increments until we reach the thickness we want

[Daniel Odom]

If your mdf is already .096 then I don't think you even need to surface it, just use it and throw it away.

[jason galbraith]

even the 3mm we get can be up to .3mm differnt in thickness over the area of a board. If i Can get it totally flat and level with the base bord then I'll get an even longer life out of the sheets, but yeah after doing a time and cost analysis, we buy a pack of 3mm MDF and just use them until they are stuffed then throw them out. Saves flycutting.

[Daniel Vonderheide]

Here's something you'll like to hear. You can change the lower limit of your wateboard and tableboard thickness. Go into your "C:\system" directory and find the file called "THM.INI". This file shoud open in a text editor like notepad. serach for the variables "MinTableboard" and "MinWasteboard". They should be under the [FLYCUT] section. You can change the values and then resave the file. BE CAUTIOUS THOUGH!!! You can change these values to the point that the machine mills the aluminum skirt on the top of the table, so be careful!!!

[Michael Hall]

Thanks for all the replies. My thought with using the .096 was that, being much thinner than the .17, I wouldn't be getting a deep enough cut through the sheets we are cutting, and I would have to adjust all of my parts files to allow for the deeper cut I would need. Using 2 of the .096 sheets seemed to be the simplest solution, if 2 sheets can be used at the same time.