Hi everyone i recently bought the drill jig and im about 150 holes into a 5x8 table (aluminum) its taken a bit because i lust mess with it when im drinking garage sodas
Been doing some reading and a lot of people dont like aluminum i have a steel plate thats 5x10 i was going to start on after the aluminum one but its 3.75 inch thick and i thought i could do the aluminum quicker since it only 2in thick both are machined flat and square .
This is mostly a hobby for me to get put the house .so would you stay steady on the aluminum or do the steel first?
Sorry for the grammar!
Just try taking a photo with your phone and click on the little arrow on the lower right corner, it lists 3-4 options, just click on your photos option, scroll till you like the photo and click the ok button
I’ve got more drilled! Those are pictures I had on my phone. I had to order a new drill bit because the one I’ve been using was a 135-degree splitpoint, and my sharpener would not sharpen to a 118-degree without having to order a 118 blade. I read it would do better in aluminum.
I would CHOOSE an all-your-minimum table ifn i had that choice.
The proviso there is that i would be choosing a fabrication station / fixturing table, not a general use table.
You can / could skin it for tasks that you’re worried about damaging the aluminum with. Sounds a lot like doing all that boring all over again and not getting another table out of it. But it would be a LOT quicker and easier to copy the hole pattern onto a thin sheet that would confer most of a steel table’s impact resilience to your setup than it’s gonna be to do manual boring through 3.75" steel plate.
One thing that 3.75" steel (as a material source) could be good for is tooling. If you’re willing to lose some of the 5 x 10 to being cut up for tooling to use with your holy slab, you’ll be surprised how quickly it goes, or how much you actually need (or want) to dedicate to making fixture tooling.
My absolutely perfect outcome for your available materials would be : Some of the steel slab going toward fab tooling; the rest helping pay for that tooling to be made; and / or traded for material for the skin layer (pick stainless, maybe 2mm thick, laser cut for you, and you’ll still be out of the world of rust concern).
I will probably end up using the thick plate for just a heavy table (catch all) and either find or buy a 3/4 or 1in plate to build another table or buy one from Jason ready to go.
I mainly build custom rock bouncers, so I don’t really need one for that. I mainly just want one.
I’ve got a 4x8 CNC plasma table; I can make a skin if anything ever comes up.
