Ouch my eye!

I took a 5 minute break at lunch to see if I could tackle the engraving table. As this part is $500 to replace, it will be a huge savings if I can de-laminate the top sheet of aluminum off of it.

As you can see from the picture above, the top surface is badly warped. Luckily this provided good access to insert a parting tool to try and separate the top from the bottom. The hardest part of the process was actually backing out the two thumb-screws that hold the rotary attachment alignment bracket in place [seen on the left edge above]. Once I got those out, it took less than a minute to break the top panel free. The heat appears to have pretty much completely released the panel from the inner structure.

The table, as you can see above, is actually composed of a fragile aluminum honeycomb structure glued between the two thin sheets of aluminum on the top and bottom. Around the edges is a 1/2in x 1/2in solid aluminum bar to provide additional rigidity and compression strength for the mounting points. On their own, each of the components is quite flimsy [with the exception of the bar that runs the perimeter] But once glued together, it is very strong, rigid, and lightweight.

The next step, for the table, will be to give the remaining part a wash, and perhaps rubbing with some steel wool to remove all the dirt from the remaining structure. Re-gluing a couple of points on the bottom sheet, as it has come lose in a few places. And then buying and machining a new top sheet with holes in the right places, before gluing it on. Luckily I can use the bottom half of the table as a template for the machining, so it should be quite easy to do.

All-in-all $500 savings for 5 min of work… I’d say it was a pretty good return on my investment! 🙂