Plate sander. Is there such a thing? I might have to build one.

[MattH]

In our CNC workshop we make lots of small engraved items from MDF (hundred's of custom pieces a week). I have a number of sanders for finishing the most useful of which is a drum sander fitted with a brush type flatter head.
But it's slow and you have to stand there feeding everything through, because of this it mostly gets used for larger pieces with lots of carving on the top.

I end up unloading an 8x4 sheet from the Router onto a downdraft table a manually sanding the edges of the products to de-nib them with a cordless palm sander.

Most of these products are in the 6"x6" range.

What I would like is a large vibrating plate with sand paper attached flush mounted in a bench so I can just hold the piece down onto it, flip the piece and repeat (imagine a DA sander upside down bench mounted).

Does such a thing exist? If it does I've never seen one.

Now I think I'm going to end up building one but how would I power it? Could I use two random orbit sanders attached to a plate (12" x 12" sort of size) or would they just fight each other?
Or should I hard mount a proper motor under neath with an offset weight and mount the whole affair on vibration mounts???

Thoughts?

 

[rtbcomp]

I made a sieve using a tumble-dryer motor with a couple of jubilee clips fastened to the shaft, such that the screws formed an eccentric.

The whole was mounted on some soft exhaust rubbers and it worked very well.

 

[Gareth0123]

An artist friend of mine uses a stand on exercise vibration plate as a flat bench sander for wood, plywood MDF, etc.

A piece of 8mm MS plate on the top and the sheets of sandpaper stuck down on the plate with PVA allowed to go tacky over night.

Changing the worn out sand paper is easy using a 3" scraper but the PVA on the steel needs to be left over night before sticking down new a sheet of sandpaper with PVA applied to it about 30 minutes before hand.

 

[MattH]

An artist friend of mine uses a stand on exercise vibration plate as a flat bench sander for wood, plywood MDF, etc.

A piece of 8mm MS plate on the top and the sheets of sandpaper stuck down on the plate with PVA allowed to go tacky over night.

Changing the worn out sand paper is easy using a 3" scraper but the PVA on the steel needs to be left over night before sticking down new a sheet of sandpaper with PVA applied to it about 30 minutes before hand.

That is a very good idea.

 

[gaz_moose]

don't think I would be bothered making it with self adhesive backed sanding discs as they tend to become unstuck when using them on the DA sander. I would go straight for Velcro backed. I am sure ive seen it on the roll before.

 

[MattH]

I used to have a 12" disc sander with Velcro backed discs so it would make sense to utilize the same or similar.

 

[Gareth0123]

For 6" X 6" MDF pieces to sand a standard abrasives sheet size of 9" X 11" would be needed, but I an uncertain if velcro backed sheets are available that size