New owner, veteran machine…

[AJ Stanfield]

Hi, all. I’ve been lurking and have posted a couple of things, but I’m here to announce that I am now a CAMaster owner. It’s an older Panther PT-408, maybe 2015ish…currently sporting a Milwaukee router (seems to have shipped with a spindle, more on that later)… I’m learning more about it as I go. Got it home weekend before last and am just starting to get it acclimated to my little shop (or the other way around) and ready to make me some parts. Took the Recoil off carefully and stored it for future use so I have some extra walking around space. Today I pried the MDF spoil boards off that had been glued to the vacuum grid top by one of the two previous owners. I’ll be taking off the sealed MDF grid top and making a new one out of .750 Sintra, with a sub top of same. I’ll try to post updates, and I’ll surely be asking questions.

[tmouse]

I have 25MM sintra on my machine as a vacuum plenum and have had good luck after I skimmed the sintra using Titebond III to hold my spoil board down

[Jim Becker]

Welcome to Camheads! You'll enjoy your new-to-you Panther once you get things set up the way you want.

[AJ Stanfield]

Tmouse, I’ve never tried wood glue on Sintra. What I do at work is double sided tape for the Sintra spoil boards on our Gerber. Im thinking about doing just that for my Sintra spoil board on top of my Sintra plenum. Does the titebond form a removable joint or a permanent one? I would expect it to pop off given some elbow grease.

I've just un-bolted the MDF plenum from my panther and have realized that the screw holes in the frame were done by hand, and I can’t replicate the pattern exactly in CAD. I’m sittin here figgerin.

[Charlie_L]

I’d put in a v bit and use the machine to identify the coordinates for each hole. However, I have lots of time.

[AJ Stanfield]

Neat idea. I think I’ll just use the old top as a template to drill the new one and then just pocket the bolt heads with a Forster bit.