Never worked metal sheet material but I need to make a couple of very flat smooth faced metal plates to act as a heat sink and to keep hot acrylic sheets flat while it cools down. Can I do this myself in the metal workshop or… ?
Thanks
Dorine
Making 2 flat plates with a handle to lift one of them up
Maybe start here: (probably want something thick enough to be very rigid rather than sheet). Figure the size you need and if it fits in mini CNC or needs big CNC. Have a budget for bits. Get inducted on CNC if not already. See if Pedro might help you (some sublimation beer bottles with cool design might come out of it).
If we need product/beer/food labels my Roland BN20A printer is built for that stuff 
As @TracyD said she wanted to sub acrylic, I wanted to set that part of it up first. The acrylic goes all soft so a cold very flat surface works well and then we need another very flat heavy surface to sit on top of the acrylic to keep it flat. Just moving it from heat press to table warps it. I use tiles and a very heavy durston jewlers bench block but the heat cracks the tiles and the block is hard to pick up.
The bottom plate ideally needs to be about 40cm by 40cm but it could be whatever we have lying around, top layer can also be any size, we just cut the acrylic to fit what we have type thing and I’m sure there are heavy things we can put on top like a bench block or other heavy item?
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That’s much clearer now understand the requirements better. Would a slab of stone - marble, quartz or granite - work for that? Could be 400x400x38mm. We can add a pair of handles to it. I’m thinking of offcuts used in kitchen worktops (free). That will withstand the heat and should be flat enough too. It also has surface already finished and smooth and just needs cutting to size, smoothing edges and drilling holes for fixing the handles. But maybe not so great as a heat sink. Could perhaps have sheet metal on that if needed - a copper plate perhaps?
@palmada - how about a Makerspace special edition brew with custom beer bottles! Check out the cool stuff that Dorine can do.
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Granite would work too 
haha, that can certainly be on the cards, once we sort out whether we can brew.
Would a copper plate be needed? Would it need to be granite - could marble or quartz do instead if granite isn’t available? At a guess, a slab that size would be about 1.5-2kg. Would you need 2 solid slabs? Would those need to be held together or in a carriage of some kind? What is max gap needed between slabs?
Try sketching out some designs that would work for what you want. (Possible to cut granite, drill holes, cut grooves, polish etc. ). Worktop offcuts seems the easiest cheapest way to go. Otherwise maybe granite or marble tile or paving (20mm). If possible have finished surface so don’t need to polish down! Tile shops will sometimes give one a single piece - perhaps a chip in the corner. If doing stonework with stone dust, that will need to be outside - better to do soon while weather is good.
I’ll be in the space later today. If you’re still planning on being in, we could look at it then.
Are you in say around 6pm or 9ish. Have a 3D induction 7-9pm
I should be there at both those times - see you then!
Google “the three plate method”
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Wouldn’t granite kitchen worktop be flat and smooth enough already? I guess we could grind down rough granite slabs if needed to, but it would be hard and tedious.
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Define flat , off-cut a granite worktop is pretty flat to be fair
For these purposes, flat means flat enough to meet the particular requirements. Let’s try it with worktop offcuts and see how that fares.
Running a bit late - should arrive at 18:10.
Thank you @dannz for helping on this supper excited to see what you make to get us going! I own you one!!
I have a Quartz (ie. man-made stone composite) offcut you can have. It’s from a sink cut out. The worktop company cut it square, put rubber feet and a nice bevel edge on it and told me it was a chopping board, but I am not pushing my knives against that 
EDIT: I can drop it at the space Saturday afternoon.
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Thanks Tom! What size is it? We need 400x400mm ideally.
Agree that should the job nicely for the bottom part