Routing through sandblast resist film

[m giese]

My thoughts are to apply the masking, then reverse pocket about .030 into clear acrylic and then sandblast with walnut shells to clean up the tooling marks, and then paint pocketed areas.

I have not done any resist sandblasting and have no experience with the media types.

Questions:

Will a medium tack adhesive backed film, I.E. anchor 117 stick well enough to cut through with cnc router and remain in place on the edges or do i need to go to high tack.

Are those films sufficient for using as a paint mask, or will I have issues with paint dissolving the masking.

What are your preferences for masking film?

Thanks in advance

 

[CS-SignSupply-TT]

Call these folks, they will have the answers http://www.hartcoservice.com/

 

[m giese]

Thanks for the direction... great people, said they had not heard of doing this before, and offered to send some sample material to test. I will post the results.

 

[CS-SignSupply-TT]

HARTCO shout out www.hartcoservice.com

Thanks for the direction... great people, said they had not heard of doing this before, and offered to send some sample material to test. I will post the results.

I am sure you will get the RIGHT solution from HARTCO. Next time you talk to them, tell them Tim Turner said HI!

 

[Gino]

Why not just weed it, blast it with aluminum oxide and then use your walnut shells to ease over it all ?? No need to rout first. Any rubber will basically work as the blasting will seal the edges 100%.

 

[Barry Jenicek]

Cutting the stencil

Although I have not tried to cut stencil with my CNC router myself, you might want to use a Downward Spiral router bit to cut with.

This is just a guess, but a straight bit may not cut the stencil cleanly enough (unless the bit is brand new and sharp). An Upward Spiral bit (in my opinion) would have a tendency to "pick up" the stencil from the substrate.

If you try this, let us know.

Barry

 

[Mosh]

bet it would be a gluey mess....

 

[roborizino]

You can use your plotter to cut that oversized job. I usually do a pen plot, then a cut plot. Works great! then you snadblast it, remove the stencil and it would look just like laser carving. Hope this helps

 

[Joe Crumley]

Greeting everyone.

All of my signs are dimensional. Several years ago I also cut my SB Mask on the router. Although I have two Gerber tractor feed plotters it was much easier to cut the mask on the CNC. The best technique I've found is with HT Hartco using a 1/4" Brad Point round over. These bits have a needle sharp tip so you should be careful about the speeds and depth of cut.

My complaint with blasting after this cut is, you can't control the depth of blasting. The next step for me was to rout for depth and them blast.

On most of my larger sign I'd cut PVC or Dibond letters and border detail and brad nail it down. That's a wonderful resist and cheap too.

Today, I've given up with blasting all together and have the router do the job.

Joe Crumley