Working with UHMW

Splat

Splat

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Finally picked up a HF 20-ton shop press last week. Yes, there is the slop in the jack plate riding along the frame posts so I picked up some UHMW to use as shims to tighten everything up. I've never worked with UHMW. Can it be tapped? Should I use epoxy or construction adhesive inside the tapped hole to prevent screws loosening, or to secure between the UHMW shims and the posts? Thanks.
 
It is very soft and will tap small which will lock the screws, from your description the load will be in shear and will work fine. It is devilish to deburr but a small wood block plane will work well on the edges.
 
As Wreck said it taps small and is self locking. I'd use a sharp tap and coarse thread of course.
 
Cool. Thank you my friends!
 
All swarf takes up more space than before you removed that stock but that category of plastics seems to be an order of magnitude more voluminous as swarf than most other materials I've worked with. Also, should you ever need to drill some out to a large diameter a woodworking Forstner bit works very well. No need to drill and bore and bore and bore. Just use the largest Forstner bit smaller than the final ID and take it in one pass, then finish to size with a boring bar.

Also it's kind of cool to see the material stream out of the Forstner bit, until it's time to clean it up.

I realize that probably doesn't apply to your current project, I'm just putting it out there for anyone who comes across this in the future under the broad heading of "working with UHMW".
 
Billh50 said:
I have found that taking a knife and just scraping the edge with the knife at 90* it cleans the edges well. Also a hole deburring tool works well on edges.
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That works well, I use steel banding which is not so sharp to cause chatter but more then sharp enough for the work in POM, PVC, UHMWPE and sometimes aluminum in a lathe under power.
 
I have even used the edge of a scale when that was all that was handy at the time.
 
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