Massive MDF Stencil: Routering 1/4″ MDF

Let’s make the biggest stencil I’ve made so far at CNCROi.com, a massive MDF stencil using quarter inch MDF.

The bed on my 5 ft x 10 ft Thermwood CNC router is huge but you have to keep in mind, this massive MDF stencil is much bigger, each roughly 4 ft square section I router cut represents a quarter of the entire project, thus the entire stencil is 8 ft square.

This will be a one-time use stencil, as such, MDF is fine, and the reason to go with quarter inch rather than thinner or thicker is just that, just strong enough to last one application without breaking as 1/8″ might and light weight enough to carry around, hence not going thicker – and by extension – heavier.

For years I had a router without any tool changer, then I had one with 4 tooling options and now I have 19 tooling options, but regardless of the quantity of tools, it makes no difference for this type of project as all I needed was one tool to cut out the shape required by the CNCROi.com customer.

What you see in the bottom left corner and along the entire edge of both 5 ft square CNC router tables are index points, they pop-up and indicate zero / zero for positioning, so I could technically do a project with absolute repeatability though I’ve never needed to use it at CNCROi.com as I employ other methods to make sure things are accurately done.

Having two tables on my CNC router is a nice thing to have, but what really makes this machine exceptional are the number of tools I have access to and believe it or not, I have some NDA projects at CNCROi.com where I wished I had even more of them!

Steel always makes for very durable stencils.

This project is huge but it wasn’t designed to be cut into four pieces, so there are some sections that are a little thin that couldn’t be avoided, I believe I used a quarter inch bit to cut this project out as well, just to minimize the push and pull through the material of this massive MDF stencil.

The dust system for such a massive machine was fantastic when I had a slower CNC router but I’m finding quickly that it’s simply not able to keep-up with this machine, this wood chipper makes chips in incredible quantities extremely fast and thus, a dust system upgrade is in the cards down the line for sure at CNCROi.com.

The capabilities of my CNC router are rarely reached, this is a full-on industrial machine doing fantastic work but nowhere near working 24/7 as it was designed to do, so it should last me an extremely long time if I keep up the maintenance schedule on it at CNCROi.com.

Once one sheet is finished, the next one is loaded onto the machine, the two knobs you see on the front of my router, right in the middle of each 5 ft square table, is actually a vacuum control, so I can turn off the table vacuum system to load and unload without having to turn on and off the entire vacuum system at CNCROi.com.

When it comes to stencils, we can make them  usnig our laser, waterjet, router or plasma cutter.

CNC routers replace a lot of hand and power tools but I still have all those tools in the shop for projects better suited to a personal approach rather than an automated one at CNCROi.com.

It always amazes me how graceful a 9 000 pound CNC router makes curves, there is so much coordination required and this machine makes it seem seamless.

I’m always very careful how I approach this type of work, it’s the simple stuff that tends to end-up having problems, not the complex projects, so I’m extra vigilent regarding tooling selection, speeds and feeds, and always listening to the router as it performs its work as you’ll always hear something going wrong before you actually see it.

At CNCROi.com, the most frequent projects I do area actualy quarter and 1/8″ MDF type projects, it’s glorified cardboard that just cuts wonderfully but is so cost-effective that for on-off type projects, it makes for the perfect choice, including this massive MDF stencil that will only be used once.

Plywood makes for fantastic stencils as well, it’s more durable than MDF though more rigid as well.

Since I got this CNC router, with all the bells and whistles, I can’t imagine my lift without it, I went from having no tool changer to 19 and wow, I can’t see myself having any less.

When it comes to your own stencil designs, they are inifinite, not just in size (like this massive MDF stencil, we can tile designs that don’t fit on the 5 ft x 10 ft bed in one solid piece) but also thickness and of course, we can also add information on the stencil so placement is a breeze.

CNC routing is really no different accuracy and repeatability wise than our CNC laser, CNC plasma or CNC waterjet cutting services, this diversity in equipment means we aren’t stuck trying to fit a round peg into a square hole, CNCROi.com can pick the best machine for the given job.

There are some parts of this massive MDF stencil that are a little more fragile than I’d like, but inner parts must be supported and those parts need to be as minimal as possible to keep the stencil integrity good enough to last for its given application.

There are many different ways to make custom stencils, material options are as endless as your creativity.

The dust you see building-up all over the place is MDF dust, since getting this machine, I’ve found out that my current dust system isn’t adequate to handle the flow of wood chips this chipper generates.

Now that the final stencil is finished, you can get a better idea of what everything looks like after removing the sacrificial material for this massive MDF stencil.

The tricky part of this massive MDF stencil was packing it in such a way that it wouldn’t get damaged, but that was a fun challenge.

Need a custom stentil at any size, shape or material? Contact CNCROi.com right now!