My work surface is primarily a vacuum table, so mostly flat MDF. As such, I use the blue tape method often (perhaps too often), but it has rarely failed me.
If you are not familiar, this is a method of adhering flat material to the spoil board using blue painter style tape. Tape is applied to the spoil board and the material to be milled. Use a J-Roller or equivalent to ensure a good adhesion.
To adhere the workpiece with the table, you spread a fair amount of CA glue on one side and usually an accelarant on the other surface. Stick them together and it will hold amazingly well.
I do some long operations with bulk material removal at aggressive speeds followed by intricate 3d carves, and this works well. It is especially handy when you 3D carve down to to the spoilboard/Z0 and don’t want to deal with tabs.
This is all standard stuff but here comes my tip. I have done this for years and the CA glue I use is usually whatever is the cheapest on Amazon or, when I run out, the insanely expensive low volume options at the local box store.
Turns out, the downside of these glues is that removing the tape, particularly from the cut material, often took a long time peeling off little pieces.
I recently bought this CA glue in bulk: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C32MI3A I assume it is the viscosity compared with what I have used before, but it holds well and the blue tape peels off in a single sheet rather than a ton of pieces. Big time saver.
TL:DR; using the right CA glue can save a lot of time.
Note: this link is a raw link with no affilate or referrer bonus involved. I was just very happy with this glue after many uses and wanted to share.
I used tape on MDF for a while, until it failed me. I’d been using double-sided tape to hold down thin sticks to carve moldings out of. On one job, the MDF failed. Not the tape! The tape had a layer of MDF fibers on it I ended up adding a hardwood strip along the edge of the mdf just for such tapings in the future.
I use SpecTape from Woodcraft. It’s intended to hold wooden blanks onto lathe faceplates, and it’s really hard to remove. It’s also a few thou thick so you have more slop for getting your Z=0 correct.
Ahh, the X Fasten stuff is very easy to remove and doesn’t leave residue, however you do have to put a decent amount on or you can get some “gummy” movement in your part.
I do have an entire spoilboard on a 4x2 held down with it… It’s been there for months and it’s been fine.
AirWeights look cool, kinda pricey. I do, however, perform a lot of operations that mill right down to Z0, so I’m always worried about a surface that can’t be repeatedly resurfaced. I haven’t looked that closely, but I imagine that are options to use airweights with sacrificial surfaces.
I did pick up four of these when they were once on clearance from Rockler:
I happened to have a good enough rotary vane pump unused in the shop. I found using just one of these, or two where they are inline (e.g. same t-track) held well but allowed some rocking. Using 3 or 4 made for a solid hold. I plan to support these as an adjustable fixture the next time I redo my whole spoilboard/vacuum table.
You can use an MDF top board on this setup along with the gasket, that way you can surface it to your machine and still get a super tight hold with the gasket.
Those rockler ones are nice too. I 3D printed some of my own a while back
I ended up adding a hardwood strip along the edge of the mdf just for such tapings in the future.