Cheap Supplier of UHMW/HDPE??

[Cheese]

I hope not. I’d be ticked if I ordered 1” thick material and it was off 1/10th inch.

If I know the cutting tolerance is too low I can order a larger piece and cut it myself but I can’t easily add to a slippery material like PE.

But it looks like you’re right. At McMaster the thickness tolerance of 1” UHMW-PE is +/- .07”. At 3” it’s +/- .15”

For comparison the thickness tolerance for Delrin is 3 times tighter.

Ya, it's really dependent upon the manufacturer, some are a lot better than others. However, they're all a lot better than they were 30 years ago, back then you were happy if they were within 10% even though that's what they quoted.  [mad]

Designed a bunch of wafer fabrication equipment for the semi-conductor folks and a consistent material thickness was absolutely mandatory from a structural standpoint. The work-around was to purchase 8 pallet loads of material at a time. The manufacturer sorted the material for +/- .015" thickness. [smile]

 

[Bugsysiegals]

I found somebody about an hour away who's selling 8 pieces of Black Densetec Marine (Light Weight) HDPE for $25 each.  It's 3/4" H x 48" L x 20.5" W.  I'm not familiar with this material but the price seems really reasonable.

Is this suitable material?  Is this such a good deal I should take all 8 or maybe 3-4 in order to make a few zero clearance inserts for the router table?

 

[GigaWatt]

From US Plastics, I paid $58.85 for one 3/4" X 12" X 12" and one 3/4" X 11-7/16" X 24". That price was including shipping and both were Recycled Black HDPE.

 

[mkasdin]

If my math serves me correctly roughly $20usd per square foot

 

[Bugsysiegals]

It turns out it was 3/8" thick rather than 3/4".  That said, for $100 she gave me 8 sheets of 3/8" x 11.5" x 96" which seems like a real score to me.  Her parents own a plastic company around here so she's able to keep the scrap off cuts and had at least another 50 in the back of her pickup!

 

[GigaWatt]

It turns out it was 3/8" thick rather than 3/4".  That said, for $100 she gave me 8 sheets of 3/8" x 11.5" x 96" which seems like a real score to me.  Her parents own a plastic company around here so she's able to keep the scrap off cuts and had at least another 50 in the back of her pickup!

Sounds like you made a real score! If you need 3/4" thick you can buy special adhesive to glue 2 pieces together.

 

[Ron B]

You did say it was scrap so maybe it was 3/4 that was rejected because it was 50% undersized. 

 

[Bugsysiegals]

I’m not familiar with how it’s manufactured but did notice one clean factory edge and one cut edge.  I ripped one sheet into 3 widths of 90mm which will allow me to put holes in the center and flip it 180 if needed.

I did also consider some glue to put them together for 3/4” but I think 3/8” might be thick enough to just hide the head of a screw with enough left to mount to the fence.