The Exalted Society of Chowed Beds And Clamps

[rungemach]

Hi Rick

The slats are cut wide enough to span two extrusion sections, while leaving the center channel of each extrusion open for a clamping bolt.
you may want to consider rearranging your extruded sections to put the narrow ones on the outside. The idea is that the slats will span the adjacent sections and bolt them together. That is hard with the narrow extrusion pieces as you need 3 channels to be able to have a slat on each side with a center channel open. if you move the narrow extrusions to the outside, you only need 2 channels, as the outer ones attach to only one slat and not 2. If you move the slats around you will probably have to put a few new holes in the plastic mounting bars to accommodate the new arrangement. Its also best if the wide extrusion sections mount to the machine with their center channel, not one of the outer ones, as some have reported that the slats tend to tilt if bolted down on one side only.

The low profile soft clamps are made with slots long enough to be able to reach past the next open bolting channel, so you will be able to clamp material at any point on the table, by choosing the closest open channel.

When you plane the slats after mounting them, you can see the limits of your cutting range so that you never risk hitting end stops due to mounting material too much to the side or back. so the slats do 3 jobs, reinforcing the table, providing a sacrificial surface, providing locating holes to true work to the axis using router drilled holes and removable pins.

The slat idea was not mine, I saw it posted by 2Big here in the forum.
http://www.cncsharktalk.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=2166

The only modification I added was to use them to span adjacent sections to stabilize the table wile keeping the center clamping channel open. So feel free to modify and add to make it better.

bob

[rsetina]

Thank you Bob. I hadn't thought about moving the two smaller extrusions to the outside so you gave me the answer to my dilemma when I had originally cut the oak slats. I don't know why I hadn't thought of something so obvious. 8) I'll be fishing this weekend in Bishop, CA so during my 4 days off during Thanksgiving I know what I'll be doing. Having fun of course.