Hi everyone! This is Sami with CNC Router Parts. Welcome to our Portland
shop.
Today I wanted to show you a few of the benefits and attributes using
composite nails as a workholding solution for a CNC machine. Now, attaching
material to the bed with composite fasteners is a really quick and easy way
to hold your material down and by far the most outstanding quality is that you
can cut right through the nails without causing any damage to your router bits.
So, this happens to be the one that I'll be using today and it's recommended by
Raptor the company that fabricates the composite nails. It looks and feels just
like a regular pneumatic nail gun there was a few features that make this tool
really unique. We do have the pneumatic nail gun as well as a variety of sizes
of the composite nails available on our website. Now, unfortunately you can't use
the nylon nails in your traditional Brad nail gun because there is a specialized
part in the tip the guide some nails into the substrate and prevents a
plastic from shattering. As you can see it's a rear-loading tool and the nails
just slide in from the back. Also notice that the tool has a safety tip which has to
be pressed fully flush for the tool to fire. We will set the air compressor to 90
psi and attach the air hose.
Here's a protip for you, I like to pull a Goldilocks and find all the different
nails that I have on hand, hold them up to the edge of the material and to find
exactly how much will be going into the spoil board. Looks like the second one is
just right to me. While we are on the subject of quick setups
which this whole gives us ability to do, I like to keep a rail at the front of my
machine which I check regularly for squared and I can just set my material
in the bed and snug it up to the edge and it's ready to be fastened to the
spoil board. I have quite a bit of flexibility in the placement of my
fasteners though I usually aim for the corners and the borders my material to
avoid any unnecessary holes in my final product. Another point I will make is
that if your material is not completely flat you will have to apply some
pressure in the downward direction while fastening it to the spoil board.
Here you can see the heads of the nail which I did for demonstration purposes
but you can adjust the height and depth and which the nail enters the material.
I'll give my material a little wiggle test to make sure it's fully attached to
the bed and run my program as usual. So, what are composite nails anyway? Well,
they are engineered polymer composite fasteners and made from Air and space grade
materials. This just means that they are made of plastic which is great for us because
your spindle can cut right through them without causing any damage to your
router bits. Also, when the nails entered the material they heat up and
essentially fuse to the substrate like a glue which makes for an extremely strong
bond. Another feature about the polymer nails
is that it has a really high tensile strength to hold the material downward
when cutting but when it comes to releasing the material from the waste board it
has a really low shear strength and can be easily broken
we tapped on the horizontal direction of the material. As you can see I had a
small cluster of nails on my final piece which was completely unnecessary and
also led to a small chip in the veneer so do take care when you place on your
nails and aim for the drop material.
Now I'll remove my waste material from the bed. Do be sure to clear up any
remnants of the nails and the spoil boards so that you have a flat surface
area for your next project.
That's all for our pro tip video about using composite fasteners. Check out our
channel for more videos about workholding solutions, projects, CNC
accessory tools and our Pro Series machines. See you all soon!