I have been wanting to experiment with my Shopbot Desktop more than I have; but I don't want to rip through hundreds of dollars worth of wood while practicing. I have found a fairly cheap source of wood for playing around and not worrying about the cost of the materials. At my local Home Depot, they have a fence board that is roughly 3/4" x 5.5" x 5' or so. It is a bit rough as in not smooth and when you go through the stack you have to be a little choosy. Here, they are $1.64 per board. There are knots but also two foot plus sections that are clear. I used one for my second cut and it worked out pretty well. I used my Dewalt surface planer and joiner to clear up the edges a bit and my chop saw to cut a bit to length. I cut it to the length of the MDF and used some home-made clamps to pinch it to the MDF on either end. All-in-all, a pretty pleasant experience.
For my home-made clamps, I cut (with other shop tools) a small scrap of 2x4 into two parts roughly pistol-shaped. Then I drilled a 3/8" hole vertically about where the trigger would be. I used some 4" x 5/16" coarse screws into one of the supplied special nuts for sliding into the aluminum base. This first try was only OK; but it was good enough for this run. I want to experiment with it a little more including a step-by-step means to make the clamps from a freshly arrived desktop without having to drive screws into the supplied MDF.
More to come...