You could use thinner aluminium jig plate with a series of tapped holes in it for studs, much lighter and simpler to make, and for hobby use adequate for most things, and no need to machine tee slots.

Chris Gunn

There are a number of people who supply small tee slot plates (5" x 4" ). Two of these will give flexibility to your setups as you can use one or two and have them together or apart as suits. RDG and Chronos sell them for example. Since they are an attachment you can drill/tap them as suits and add holes for hardened dowels if required without doing something to the mill that can't be undone.

Martin C

Smiley removed

Edited By Martin Connelly on 15/09/2021 12:57:32

For smaller work "grid of tapped holes" plates can be very useful. But tapping all the holes is a pain.

I've used 1/2" thick anodised alloy breadboards from Thor Labs for such duties and found them both satisfactory and not impossibly expensive given the time and effort of DIY. If you don't have suitable material to hand aluminium tooling plate or equivalent quality steel plates of suitable thickness approaches the cost of a Thor Labs breadboard. In my case possibly 1/4 more for the ready tapped product so worth the extra cost for me. Thor were quite happy to take my credit card details.

Thor Labs single density boards with 6 mm holes on 25 mm centres are here **LINK** https://www.thorlabs.com/newgrouppage9.cfm?objectgroup_id=159

and double density ones in 5 spot pattern here

**LINK** https://www.thorlabs.com/newgrouppage9.cfm?objectgroup_id=1861

They also make round ones which can be useful on rotary tables. Especially small ones which tend to be short on clamp space.

There are other suppliers of similar items which may be better priced. Thor are simply the folk I know or, more correctly I suppose, knew.

Simple table clamps similar to those shown here **LINK** https://www.thorlabs.com/newgrouppage9.cfm?objectgroup_id=191 work well with grid of holes plates. Easily made to suit the job. Way too expensive to buy!

Being so easy to replace they can be considered disposable. If one gets in the way I've been known to simply cut through it and swop another one in when the coast is clear. Helps that the grid of holes flexibility lets you use more, smaller, clamps than a T slot system. With less load per clamp loosing one temporarily is no great problem. Much easier than doing the clamp shuffle with the common, effective but somewhat cumbersome, sets.

More clamps sharing the load is nice when dealing with something easily distorted too. Real nice if its possible to line up a bolt or screw with a hole in the part too. More a repair than a making thing methinks.

6 mm or 1/4" screws / bolts can produce ample clamping for anything we tend to deal with. But they are less stiff than the larger bolts and studs used with T slots. Where stiffness is needed a suitably large stub with a short male thread on the bottom works fine. 1/2" deep tapped hole and 1" of all thread / studding works fine.

As ever whats best for you depends on what you do.

Clive