Hi all, I’m having laser-ply woes:
I’ve used apparently respected supplies like Hobarts and Hindleys many times, but I’m often disappointed in one way or another with the product I receive. I’ll typically order mid-sized sheets of 4mm laser ply in packs of ten or twenty, sometimes more. Every time, there’s always a significant portion of them that are warped near or to the point of uselessness. Sometimes it’s fully half of the batch!
I’ve tried a few tricks to flatten them again but I’ve yet to arrive at a successful solution.
The second problem is consistency: I just bought a pack of 5mm ply from Hindleys, and I received pieces ranging from 4.7 to 5.5mm in thickness. This again makes these pieces useless for my purpose, as you can’t very well design tab slots with a precise fit if there’s almost a millimetre thickness variance across your materials. And that’s even before the problem of cutting them cleanly with the laser.
My questions to the community are thus:
- Does anyone have a trusted vendor they can recommend, or is warped and/or variably thick laser plywood an industry standard? I understand there’s no such thing as perfectly flat or exact tolerances, but I feel I can expect a little better…
- Does anyone have any proven tips for flattening warped birch plywood?
- Does anyone have any ideas for making this over-thick ply useable without modifying my design for each piece? Would the planer thicknesser be of any use? Is that an utterly stupid idea? I know nothing about planer thicknessers.
Thanks for your attention!
