Spoil Board Cut

[aliciaj]

Good Day, I need to make sure my spoil board is perfectly level. I have the big spoil board cutter bit. Do I select the 96x48 board and tell he Shopbot to cut it down, say at 1/2in. all around?

[steve_g]

Alicia…
In the interest of keeping the spoilboard around as long as possible… start by cutting as little as possible to level the spoil board. Try .060” to start with..
SG

[jerry_stanek]

Alicia…
In the interest of keeping the spoilboard around as long as possible… start by cutting as little as possible to level the spoil board. Try .060” to start with..
SG

I start with removing .010

[signtist]

Alicia, save this job because you will need it every time you resurface the table.

[steve_g]

Ha!... .060” as compared to .5! Anyway the SB spoilboard surface default is .030”. You’ll soon learn whether .01 or .03 or .06 is appropriate for how messed up your spoilboard is! At any rate we all agree that ½” is too deep!
SG

[GeneMpls]

Hi Alicia- welcome to a great board. For those of you who don't
know... Alicia is something of a legend in the hand painted sign
world (Letterheads) and good people. I am GeneMpls on the other
boards BTW.

[ssflyer]

Hi Alicia,

One thing to keep in mind - if you are referring to the starter bit set and the Onsrud spoilboard surfacer, I believe it has a maximum cutting depth of 1/8".

All the spoilboard cutters I've used have a very limited depth of cut.

[scottp55]

I agree with everybody Start super light like Jerry said--May give a really good indication of Z alignment problems before going further and get rid of any super high points. I'm one of the "Teeny" guys with a desktop but still Z-zero'ing to a low spot can come as a surprise when you hit a high spot, Can only imagine for you guys. Humidity changing 40% in 24 hrs here-back and forth.
Welcome.

[aliciaj]

So do I use the "Pocket Toolpath"? I have had my ShopBot for a few years now. mostly cutting simple shapes and letters. But I am going to start doing more work that reguires everything to be perfect. That's why I'm setting up a new spoilboard. The one I have now is made of particle board and is pretty worn out. Plus it is about off 3/8 on the far corners.

[ssflyer]

A few years back, Paco wrote an excellent surfacing routine. It let's you choose to raster in the X or Y direction, and with a few simple inputs lets you choose cutter diameters, depth of cut, stepover, etc.

If the first pass didn't go quite deep enough, when it ends it offers you the choice to run again at the same depth or half of that depth.

Pretty slick and easy to use. You can find it HERE.

As Scott mentioned, I try to Z-Zero at the highest spot to start...