Hi,
I am not a woodworker, but I am looking at using a drum sander for a manufacturing operation and would like to get the input of some experts. I need to sand .020" and .027" thick fiberglass strips (.75" to 4" wide at various lengths) to prepare them for an epoxy bonding operation. We currently do this by hand using a hand held orbital sander. If I could shoot these through a drum sander it would speed things up tremendously and, hopefully, give us more consistent results. I was looking at the Grizzly G0716 10" unit that just came out because of the low price and the option to use it without the arm support bracket. But it states that it will only go as thin as 1/4". I've seen other units with a minimum of 1/8" thickness.
I called Grizzy and they said that they don't recommend using it for something that thin. Of course they aren't going to say it can doing something outside of what it is spec'd for. And I assume it has some kind of hard stop that would prevent me from going that small anyway.
So my question is, is there a way to put my strips on some kind of a backer block and feed them through together? Has anyone tried to sand something thinner than the machine will go before?
Any help is appreciated!
Wayne
I am not a woodworker, but I am looking at using a drum sander for a manufacturing operation and would like to get the input of some experts. I need to sand .020" and .027" thick fiberglass strips (.75" to 4" wide at various lengths) to prepare them for an epoxy bonding operation. We currently do this by hand using a hand held orbital sander. If I could shoot these through a drum sander it would speed things up tremendously and, hopefully, give us more consistent results. I was looking at the Grizzly G0716 10" unit that just came out because of the low price and the option to use it without the arm support bracket. But it states that it will only go as thin as 1/4". I've seen other units with a minimum of 1/8" thickness.
I called Grizzy and they said that they don't recommend using it for something that thin. Of course they aren't going to say it can doing something outside of what it is spec'd for. And I assume it has some kind of hard stop that would prevent me from going that small anyway.
So my question is, is there a way to put my strips on some kind of a backer block and feed them through together? Has anyone tried to sand something thinner than the machine will go before?
Any help is appreciated!
Wayne