I am working on an adaptor for my 6" belt sander that will turn it into a precision thickness sander. Everything seems to be working pretty well except for the feed speed which I am doing by hand. I am thinking because it is allready on a slope I could use a gravity feed as not much pressure is required to feed it through.
My question is I need the slickest surfaces possible to allow these items to slide. My material will be sitting on a 36" metal sled that weighs about 1# and the feed platform is on about a 20 degree angle. What material for slick surfaces should I be looking at?
HDPE is very good. Another choice is this GPO-3 stuff which is used as sliding surface material in a variety of woodworking tools such as this Incra table saw sled.
I was going to suggest UHMW plastic (ultra high molecular weight polyethelene, aka UHMWPE). It’s actually rather close to HDPE - a bit tougher and somewhat harder to cut and shape (but still fairly easy).
Teflon is very low friction, but is both expensive and easily damaged - probably not tough enough for this application.
I did something really dumb, I was blaming an inconsistent feed on the little dips I was getting. It was actually my exit table was too short and it was high centering , I have nothing to hold it down on the exit side of the sanding drum. I still like the idea of a gravity feed though. Once the material went high center it would make a little dip and then start a slight taper in thickness all the way to the end, only a few thousands but still too much.