Ok, weird but true, there is very little on the forum regarding placement of a fence. I am thinking of using one of those “dog hole” with PVC pipe fences. I have seen quite a few but where would be the best place for them on the very edge of the cutting area or slightly within it? Also, what is the recommended distance of the front feet of the y rails from the front edge of the table. I placed my old one so close that i could not use the printed cable protectors I bought for it. should I just move it towards the back? enough that i can drill a hole for the cable to come up through the bottom?
Hi Robert - I don’t have specific recommendations for you (yet) but I would say place them within the boundaries of your machine. Then the machine can cut the location for you and you have a precise starting point for any cut. I happen to put my current (x,y) = (55,65) but that is purely based on my current spoil board layout. When I upgrade to the Elite, I plan on redesigning things based years of lessons and pain. Hopefully in the near future I will have more specifics.
-Tom
Why not make a staggered pattern? Then use G54 style offsets depending on work size?
I decided to use the dog hole style, using 1/2 pvc water pipe. The diameter is of the water pipe is around 0.840 diameter so normal dog hole pins are 0.75 diameter so keep that in mind when figuring out your fence location. I made a 4” grid starting 2” of the home location of the machine zero in “X” & “Y”. With the 4” grid you will be able to locate any size board on the table and be able to use the wedging method to clamp the board on the table. This for me has worked really well, it makes easy to clamp and there are no clamps above the machining area. Most of the YouTube cncer’s I have watched use this method and others use the double sticky tape with this kind of grid.
If you know your constant size cut , stay out side of that. I did my new one yesterday.
Full perimeter except for none in the corners . Then random vert and horiz. with at least 3 holes in a line to hold a scrap board and a shim Less screws and nails in my spoil board . And yes I shellac after surfacing the sb. Hope this helps
I used standard .75” dog holes with consistent spacing. I 3D printed bench dogs and rails for alignment, and also some posts for some spiral edge/cam clamps I cut with the CNC.
Clamps I have plenty of lol. I do like the yellow dog hole things:)
The last pic makes me feel like having breakfast (sunny side up). ![]()
Do you find you use all the holes you have both the horizontal and vertical rows? All your pictures you are only using the vertical rows, wondering if that’s normal for you or if the horizontal rows get used too.
Probably going to set up my v2 spoilboard similar to yours and need to work out my hole pattern.
I like the cam clamps!
I’m using the OF Microjig Matchfit spoilboard design that combines both dog holes (3/4”) and dovetail slots. I 3D printed a bunch of Matchfit style dovetail clamps with nylon bolts & nuts. But mostly I use the dog holes with 3/4” oak dowel segments and wedges to lock in my material. These methods make sure if I do something wrong, I’m not trashing a bit into metal or even kicking out shards of plastic. And it’s easy to make more dowel dogs or print some more clamps.
At first, I was just using it for alignment, so started with only a couple of holes along each axis. I slowly added more as I needed them for edge clamping. I mostly work on relatively small projects and eventually completed the grid so that I could place the material in clean areas of the spoiler board.
My suggestion: Start out with just what you need for your first few projects. Eventually, you’ll have a better sense of your desired hole pattern. It doesn’t have to be uniform. I have a couple of holes that are offset from my grid pattern. I needed to add them because the holes of the basic pattern were too far apart (or too close) for edge clamping a piece I was working on. I could have created smaller/larger clamps, but it was easier to drill the holes.
The nice thing with the CNC is that you can easily add the holes when you need them.



