Phenolic sheet stock for tooling?
I’m having fun building prototype table inserts, fixtures and fences for several old and several new tools; Delta 16″ drill press, Biesemier long fence addition for 10″ Ridgid table saw (tables for drop in router lift on LHS & saber saw drop in on RHS), Makita 10″ sliding miter saw long fence with measuring tape, 12″ planer stand with big wheels for outdoor use, etc.
I’m having fun boot-strapping these tables and fixtures using mostly Melamine coated particle board and I’m trying some of the different Kreg and Incra and Woodpecker track and clamp products. But having tried some quarter sheets of phenolic coated birch plywood, I’d like to use that for my final parts. And I’m having trouble finding 3/4″ thick sheets in any size. You can see red phenolic plywood at Woodpecker in their drill press tables (back ordered until July now) and green phenolic at other .com vendors but they are all out of 3/4″ stock, let alone tooling grade 1″ or thicker which I know exists. They all say it isn’t available or it is back ordered. Now I understand this last winter was short in northern Europe and they can’t harvest birch after the thaw, so there is basically a shortage of the long grain core that is used to make the phenol coated, concrete form spec. sheet stock right now. One wholesaler in southern Calif. offered to sell me a half dozen whole sheets, but then declined due to the trouble of breaking a bundled lot and the “slippery” and heavy nature of full sheets. They said shipping insurance was also an issue. But I guess they also really didn’t want to sell to a private individual. I’d like to use the 3/4″ to make my final table tops and fences.
Does anyone know where I can get whole, half or quarter sheets? Also, where can I get linen or glass fiber reinforced phenolic sheets, say 1/2″ or thicker in 2′ X 3’or 4′ size? The phenolic faced and plate goods are flat, smooth, more stable and tool very nicely even compared to HDPE. They also are solvent resistant, take wax and teflon spray beautifully, are lubricious, stiction free and clean up great compared to MDF or sealed or melamine plywood or even anodized aluninum stock which is hard then gummy to machine, sweats, has a huge C.T.E and sticks to my wood work stock like a boat anchor.
Looking for more fun in some of the right places!
red2erni
Portola Va, CA
Replies
You might have the big one when you look at prices for grade G-10 in 1" phenolic.
http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/category.asp?catalog%5Fname=USPlastic&category%5Fname=79&Page=1&utm_source=google&gclid=CJ6x2JesuIwCFSBMGgod2DTZRQ&cookie%5Ftest=1
Beat it to fit / Paint it to match
Hay, great plastic products site! In my bookmarks now. So OK, your right, heavy coin at first blush. But say some hero buys the 3/4" Phenolix XX sheet (48" X 48") for $312 and parts it out into 24 each, 4" high, 24" long, blank fence face boards (lovely gold color). That's for about $12 each and then provides them in pairs over UPS to the rest of us. That is what I've been hopeing to find at one of the 'woody' tool vendors. They have MDF stuff for about the same price. Look at the specs of the Phenol XX grade, it's just the right material. When I think about the value of my time and the satisfaction of right-spot on fixtures, it's the RTTD (right thing to do) solution. The water uptake is really low and those parts would clean up and go to town, be slicker than an oil change without an oil pan. Thanks.red
wwwmcmaster.com carries lots of phenolics, delrin, garolite. It's generally expensive stuff for the hobby guys.
Thanks for the tip. I was hopeing someone had a rework bin or a scrap off operation for us DIYers. There is so much FR4 around does anyone laminate up PCB seconds? But I do go to MacMaster/Car when all else is lost or I can't find a particular fastener at Home-Desperate or 'gOSH'.red
What about corrian or equivalent, works and machines very nicely.
Work Safe, Count to 10 when your done for the day !!
Bruce S.
Hummm, Corian, not bad. But I think all the cast or solvent based polymers without the mat or fiber reinforcement are either soft or have low strain to failure. I mean, what is the purpose of the glass fiber in 'fiber-glass'? But Corian or simialr counter top material might be good for small machined parts and face boards where chipping isn't an issue. Polycarbonate and urathanes are gummy in stiction and gall, won't keep a finish, but Corian might be harder. Would it be brittle in vice-up? The polyethylenes are getting a run these days. I was in Woodcraft the other day and the sales guy started in on 'high molecular weight' polymer. I saw $$ signs right away, so I told him 'no. no. just plane old cutting board stock'. I paid $30 for a package of colored scrap. The substituted polypropylenes; great chem-hard and water properties, but even the highest density is soft and will cold flow under clamping like teflon. But Corian, hummm! Boy this if fun!! Thanks,red
I helped disassemble a kitchen for a friend who was upgrading. This included some corian type counters. We reinstalled it in a utility room at property my church owns. I ended up with some back splash strips. These worked great for cauls to keep panels flat. Plus the glue overflow scrapes right off. I clamped each board in the panel to the corian and then cross clamped it. Very flat boards. I also biscuited the boards to aid in alignment. The first view panels that I didn't do this with were not well aligned.
One issue that was raised in the installing instructions I came across online was that screws directly into corian weaken the material. They suggest glueing wood to the material and screwing into the wood instead. I may try this for a router table fence to see how it works out. It is slick and can be sanded smooth if scratches happen.
Hi Kenshep, Yah there are alot of great materials that turn up in projects like the one you were doing. Artists call it 'found art' but jobbers fro the git go tht there is dusty treasure in every demo job and great tail stock in every build up. Anyone can get great info on stuff like Corian. Wikipedia calls it out as a DuPont thermoset composite of acrylate and aluminum tri-hydrate, which is a soft form of aluminim oxide which is an abrasive or a gem stone when it is a single crystal called saphire. The hydroxide is kind of soft and is good as a stiff filler and adds compression strength and scratch resistance to the plastic fration in a thermoset counter material. It's also a laxative and used for lots of other stuff.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alumina_trihydrate So that is why you can't drill in it and keep it from loosing it's strength. The hydroxide doesn't have alot of strength as a filler. It is just barely insoluble, but will dissolve in either dilute acid or dilute base, what chemist call amphoteric behavior. Wikipedia calls out using adhesive to Corian. Make use of what comes your way is my motto.I recently used some Zodiac, another DuPont counter top material for the front plate of a speaker pair. I had used it in a kitchen and a bathroom i did (am still doing the bathroom...) Anyway it's very optical and comes in many amazing uptown colors and textures. It uses large grins of pure silica or quartz with a bonding material and is much harder than Corian, even harded than granit, so you couldn't drill it or screw into it even if you wanted to. It cuts with a water jet. Many beautiful colors and it is really hard as measured by what is called the modulus of elasticity, it was the stiffest sheet stock I could find and worked really great with the high end audio speaker drivers I used, but like Corian, not alot of what is called strain to failure. red
This may not work for your applications, but I use a lot of cutting boards. Wall Mart has large high quality cutting boards for around 8 bucks. I cut the up into the needed sizes and they work great. Very slick and nothing sticks to it. Very handy in the spray booth.
Pardon my spelling,
Mike
Make sure that your next project is beyond your skill and requires tools you don't have. You won't regret it.
Mikey, never mind the spelling, you da' man!! You'd think Tauton would have a spell checker on this blog for 34$ a year!So hats it for the big $$ 'high molecular weight polyethylene'. Hard to glue up? .. but hay! lubricious. I bet even 'Wallymart' and 'Tarjay' have a sale, time to time, for even less. Super face board stuff. And you can cut up lettice in the mean time..I just made some full length runners for a sled on parallel T-tracks in this stuff. I slotted the runners from below with a narrow kirf saw and then drilled and countersunk for a 1/4-20 flat head which expands the poly-ethylene runner when I turn down on the knob above. This locates and secures the tool on the sled to the T-track table. I have five or six tools that will slide on this husky utility cart and then slide off and stow away. I'll post a picture for ya'. Love this stuff so much I might even paint it just to see the paint fall off.So, .. got any cheap 1" G-10 phenol plate products at Walmart? red
Just remembered another phenolic material that is reenforced, but you'll pay through the nose. Electrical buss bar insulating stock, used to use it at the power plant I worked for.
Work Safe, Count to 10 when your done for the day !!
Bruce S.
Hi Bruce,That would have been scrap and tailings, I'm sure!! Yah, the really good stuff which is woven glass reinforced is more than $1k/4'X8' sheet in 1/2" or thicker. So bars of that would be great. Confession is good for the sole. Put away all of the tools on your bench and all will be forgotten if not forgiven. What I just did on a cart top project was to laminate 7/16" thick 2 side phenolic coated birtch onto MDF. I got some 24" X 48" sheets from my local San Carlos CA Woodcraft for about $24/sheet, only used a quarter of one. Cut it 14" wide exactly with a very good 10" blade on my new Biesemeyer/old Ridgid TS. Used that piece to space two 24" long Incara miter channels on the MDF top plate of the cart. Set the channels in a thin bead of liquid nails. Used Tight Bond II which is lower viscosity to bond the phenolic plywood to the MDF full face sheet wise. Used every clamp I have, set up quick, looks great, strong as He--, Looks great. The tracks are parallel to the fence cut spacer which is parallel to better than a few thousandths. Put a slide dial indicator on a long tight runner, couldn't see any run out. This will work on cutter table miters for zero tolerance sleds, etc. Very happy camper. I may buy some half sheets of < 1/4" solid XX grade Phenolic to use as face sheets on the final saw table drop ins and other track/slider fixture jobs. I want better impact resistance and and flex than I can get from the phenolic faced plyweed. I don't recall anyone making gears out of that. I wouldn't want to put snap down bar clamps through the stack up of the MDF on a drill press table for instance. redred
Suppliers that cater to commercial concrete contractors will be able to get the phenolic surface film (psf) form board.
It is expensive, but comes in several thicknesses starting at 3/4 and going up, (I think) in 1/4-in increments to 1-1/2-in. It may be available thicker, but I have never seen it.
Another alternative is High density overlay (HDO) form board. It is similar to the more familiar medium density overlay (MDO) plywood, but has heat cured resins in the surface coating, making it harder and smoother than mdo.
And, MDO is a good material for many jigs, and surface plates. Which is more readily available through many lumber yards
An option rarely considered is products designed for tooling and fixtures. OBO Modualn tooling board, and and fixture board. Both are expensive, but there isn't really a better material, as both are designed for the application.
McCausey Lumber has all of these available if you live on either coast. However I'm not sure they sell small quantity retail.
But, if you check Google, or the yellow pages, you should find other sources.
Thanks for the info. I'm having good fun with my 'family guy' tooling projects. Each one gets me some new degree of capability both for the projects I've got going, honeydo and honeytodo as well as to improve the next fixtures themselves. How do I upload some jpegs, would that be of interest to your blog? So phenol clad birch key stock; Woodcraft and Woodpecker are both out and back ordered. Rockler doesn't carry it. Looked on ebay several times. So funny story...I found Rich at McCausey awhile back in the Chicago office. The buyer at a local plywood distributor gave me his number. He was very friendly. Great sales guy. We laughed and laughed when he found out what I was doin'. I got alot of good info from him and his web site. Your right, amazing use of this material in PIP concrete high rise construction! Global warming, for real short winter in Finland, very short on birch core ..amazing. He even gave me the names of the towns and rivers. But for whatever reason, he didn't really want to go a half dozen sheets (his skew # F1F19058X4RD1Z - 19 mm, 14 ply, 220gr/side red phenol was just my ticket) so he put me onto Mike (a fearsome competitor - I should have known, sink the other guy!) at North American Plywood in Sante Fe Springs (562-941-7575). He quoted me 'Euroform' birch with Dynea Resin (12.5mm had an Ea of 2E6 psi-Wow) So 19 mm OSHA 220 gr. dk. brown (yuch!) was $76.80/sheet with a $500 minimum. I got out my AMEX card. But he called me back. His shipper had cold feet and didnt want to break a batch, got skiddish on banding a short lot without damaging the outside edges, (slides around alot don't ya know!) something about underwriters cancel their insurance, .. like my first wife, ... not real clear on that last phone call, but they tried. So I may go back to my pal Rich. I want that stuff. I'll try the 'OBO Modualin' do you have any ANSI or OSHA or other number on that? I'm also going to spring for some XX or better solid phenol sheet stock. I'd rather go this buy up DIY route than buy fancy european tools. Some of my pals might want to go in for a fair share of the high cuts. red
Man, you just have to have an engineering background by the way you write and how you love spec items. I bet you sleep with code books. That stuff makes my head hurt!!!! Are you woodworking or building a reactor?
Check the local toilet partition guys. A lot of the indestructible stuff is phenolic. They may even have mistakes/returns/odd sizes available for less dinero.
"Roger Staubach for President"
Hi Doorboy, Whaddya mean, ...I am the local tolet partition guy .. and it's not my hands that get on the phenolic. red
I was thinking of something like AMPCO partitions. There's others"Roger Staubach for President"
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