Cable Tag Jig: Routed 5/8″ MDF

January 20, 2025 Jon 0 CNC Router, CNCROi.com News, Jigs, Wood Products,

Making a custom cable tag jig using our CNC router on 5/8″ MDF produces precise results that are repeatable.

CNCROi.com does custom fabrication big and small, in this case, the MDF custom cable tag jig is only 4″ square… and the table size of our Thermwood CNC router is 5 ft x 10 ft.

Making something so small using a machine that’s so big isn’t ideal, it’s like using a firehose to water a garden and as such, what works at a larger scale must be modified to work at a smaller one properly as there are a lot more small movements instead of big ones.

Luckily, I learned how to CNC router using a ShopBot Desktop that was roughly 2 ft square so to me, it’s just reverting back to the lessons I learned when I first began down this path decades ago.

Making this custom cable tag jig, I had to basically block-off a large portion of my CNC router table so that I could achieve adequate vacuum hold-down on such a small object, and it worked great.

I forgot to record the first of two custom cable tag jigs being fabricated at CNCROi.com because the camera was off, but there are actually two jigs being made in this run, as the customer is in Australia and I want to avoid shipping something twice.

If you want to see one of the jigs I’ve made at CNCROi.com along the same theme as this cable tag one, watch the video above.

The first jig is a bit looser on the specs, more depth, width and length in the cavity as the cable tags in North America aren’t necessarily the same spec as those in Australia, I wanted to cover all my bases for my customer.

The second jig is dead-on spec wise, I’m 99% sure that it will work perfectly fine, but if there is some slight give and take required, MDF is the better material for this custom cable tag jig because it’s easily sanded.

The customer did measure their cable tags and it ended-up being the same spec as the ones I etch at CNCROi.com, but it’s always nice to have a backup as manufacturing specs do change from time to time.

After the first custom cable tag jig was fabricated, the second was made, again, we are talking about fractions of a fraction of an inch of play here.

MDF is great for a huge variety of custom jigging requirements that CNCROi.com can fabricate on your behalf.

The piece of MDF that I’m using for this project is an off-cut from another project we did, hence not being totally square, but it is flat, and it does have a flat size… and most importantly, the two custom cable tag jig fit on it!

Like the first one, there are two levels of carving, the first is the overall “top” of the cable tag and then it’s the two indents on both sides where the tab can fall down into.

The tab is vital because these tags will be fiber laser etched and as such, if that tab wasn’t there, the tag would get hot and be VERY prone to warping… something I’ve experienced first-hand.

Having the flat part of the cable tag right on the custom cable tag jig also provides a little bit of a stabilization and heat sinking capability, which greatly reduces distortion, again, something I discovered first-hand doing this type of work in North America for customers all over.

When it comes to custom jigs, CNCROi.com can even make thick ones!

Once both custom cable tag jigs are fabricated, you can immediately see that one is deeper than the other, I have no problem at CNCROi.com making things dead-on spec wise, but when it’s going far and wide outside of North America, I prefer being safer than sorry due to shipping costs and time.

The suction on my vacuum table is so strong, even the dust wants to stay put when I lift the scrap from the two custom cable tag jigs at CNCROi.com.

Just for comparison, I’ve included a picture below of the jig I made using my laser, it’s just as good as these two routed ones, but the routed ones are more precise regarding depth.