[lefteyewilly]

I'm using a desktop cnc machine to mill a material that is irregular in size and thickness that would be similar to potato chips made from wood or PVC (I can't divulge the material name due to business concerns). I mount 30 of these at a time, so there's no way to mount it with clamps or standard mounting materials. I run 3 different sets of G-Code they're pocketed, profiled and engraved.

I've tried carpet tape, double sided tape, standard spray adhesive (3M 77), as well as wood glue but they didn't work well.

I've found that using hot glue on the material and attaching it to a sheet of acrylic works pretty well to hold the pieces in place. I need them all to be the same thickness, but hot glue isn't always the same thickness, and I can't have too much variation (less than 0.1mm is all I have room for), so it works but not to the accuracy that I need.

I've considered a vacuum table, and I've been told that 3m makes a pressure sensitive spray adhesive, but it's fairly expensive to buy if I'm only going to use it once.

Are there any adhesives that would be similar to hot glue but consistent in thickness? Anyone have experience mounting odd shaped materials?

[rowbare]

Have you looked at the 3M ATG tapes? I have used them to hold pcbs for milling and engraving. The adhesive is only about 2 mil thick. There are a few different grades, some are really aggressive. You can use them without the tape gun btw.

Scotch ATG Adhesive System :3M US

bob

[keebler303]

There are adhesives meant for mounting microscope specimen that are hot melt but they don't use a gun. You can put your fixture on the stove on low and melt the glue onto your fixture, then load your parts, push them down with a heavy plate or something, then turn off the burner and let it cool.

The stuff I have used was a big stick about 1" in diameter and 8" long, wrapped in a paper tube.

[rbjem]

I have been using double stick turners tape for quite a while on wood and plastic. it works pretty well unless your parts have very little surface area. I recently tried mighty grip from mighty bite on some of my smaller parts which worked much better than the tape, but it is slightly more of a hassle to apply.

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[lefteyewilly]

Finally got back here to tell you my findings. So i found a great company called The Binding Source 3M? authorized distributor of Tape, Adhesives, Abrasives, and Reclosables. They sell single rolls of 3m tape of all kinds - which is hard to find as I've really only found places that sell by the case which doesn't work for my purposes. These guys are pretty amazing. I bought some 3M ATG tape and some adhesive spray I thought would work. I got the products and tested quickly, but I had a problem with peeling back the roll of tape I bought. So I called them up and asked if I was doing something wrong. I talked to Jeff who asked me what my purposes were and he told me immediately I had bought the wrong tape. He suggested a specific tape for me to use, and without me even asking he sent me a roll for free...including shipping - and he didn't even want me to send back the roll I just bought. Pretty amazing. The new tape arrived (3M ATG 410), and it worked perfectly. The pressure sensitive spray probably would work for other materials, but it turns my material blue and it's very hard to remove. So now I'm alternating between hot glue and the 410 tape. Thanks for all your suggestions guys!