Rout job larger than material

[signguy]

I've only been running the gerber sabre 408 for a little over a year now and have been lucky enough to rout jobs that have always fit on 8' - 10' material.

Sooo now that my lucks run out and I have to cut some material way over 10' I was wondering if some of the router guru's have some advice/tips/tricks for a n00b on how they line up the sheets to make sure everything is straight.

in advance

 

[J Hill Designs]

I use registration holes - left and right - when they both line up with the mill bit, the material is straight

 

[John L]

Yep.. sometimes I do the same. Just place a couple 1/4" holes in each of your drawing files for the sections, saved at the the same place. Then toolpath them seperately. Run the hole toolpath for the first part so that it just touches the spoil board (so you have a fixed reference marked on the table). Then run the hole toolpath for ea section first so that you can align the substrate to your original dimples that are in the spoil board.

Sometimes I just make a little cut passes above and below the first section then just align that to pencil marks on the table each time it is slid down. As well, a pencil mark for X alignment would keep you in line that way.

There are various ways to align.. just depends on what level of accuracy you have to go to and what shape you are cutting. Just think along the lines of getting something in the file that you can use for real world reference on the table as you are shifting it along the X axis.

 

[J Hill Designs]

I dont put them in the cut file - when setting up material on router, put hole @ origin, move Y distance, cut hole, move X distance cut hole, move -Y cut hole, move -X and should be back at origin. when panelling, set origin to far hole, move X to check if you moved it straight. I have done 4 panel jobs this way, as my router is only 36"x36"

 

[astro8]

Similiar ways to John L. Have v-grooved (dibond for folding)1500mm x 4050mm on a 1250mm x 2450mm table in 4 shifts of the material (x and y)then changed tools and did it over again to cut the piece out with no problems. (pain in the arse though!)

 

[Ian Stewart-Koster]

Just finished a job with two aspects:

it was ten sheets of dibond at 1500 x 3050 mm each sheet, profile cut, and also plotted with a plotter-blade to cut the plastic coversheet.

One irregularly-shaped sign used four sheets, horizontally, the corners all meeting in the centre like a + sign, while the other took six big sheets vertically suspended- so it was 9 metres wide by 10 ft high, less the weird router-cut border shape.

Our router could hold the full-sized sheets- it was a matter of having the file set up, and rotated if need be, with the computer-file plate size set as per the sheet size.

The outlines cross off the plate, so I had to cut by line, to trim everything as it ran off where the edge of the sheet would be. Then plot the inner parts, and edge-rout the border.

Then remove that sheet, load the next against a prefixed long & short edge so the origin was always perfect.

The go back to the file on the PC, and use the 'move' command to shift the Y axis by -1500mm (for instance), then trim where the new file's contours go off the plate, then export the plotter blade file, then export the perimeter profile-cut file; then plot, cut, remove the sheet, & put the next one down.

Go back to the software, use the 'move' command to shift the file by -1500mm, trim overlapping contours again, and continue as above.

Hope that makes sense.