Domino tape board

Testing and practicing with the Shaper Origin is going well. I have arrived at the point of cutting parts that are too big for the Shaper Workstation but require a precision that I’m not comfortable with marking with a pencil and using the Shaper Plate. For this, people make so-called tape boards with the domino tape.

There are some issues with this: domino tape is expensive and fragile. It is expensive because the sequence of dominoes is random and they are all different. This is what the Shaper Origin needs to recognize them and determine its position. They are vulnerable because it is a laminated tape. I read of people covering it with packing tape but the dominoes becoming undetectable, while others reported a specific tape working without problems. I tried my no-name tape and it works perfectly.

Here’s the setup: at the edge of the table is the part that needs to be cut. Behind it is a spoil board of the same material. This must be the same thickness as the SO slides over it. Behind that is the tape board which must be the same thickness or a little less so that the SO doesn’t bump against it.

I use double sided tape to hold everything in place. There’s no spoil board underneath because the precision of the SO is better than the thickness of the double sided tape so I don’t even touch the table, which may be damaged, it doesn’t matter. Look at these cuts: completely straight and the size and shape of the part exactly like in the CAD software!

Last picture is the new Festool dust extractor that I didn’t show yet. Festool is a shareholder of Shaper and manufactures the hardware part of the machine. This means that they are very compatible: here I attached the Shaper systainer to the top of the Festool dust extractor, creating a sidetable on wheels which is great to put the machine on in between operations.

What I particularly like about this dust extractor is that it has a compartment to store the long hose. In the picture I only have part of the hose out.