Author Topic: Cutting Honeycomb Aluminum  (Read 4142 times)

Offline Action1

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Re: Cutting Honeycomb Aluminum
« Reply #15 on: February 21, 2012, 11:14:38 AM »
Update: I cut one of the aforementioned honeycombs last week with an aluminum cutting blade on the circ saw and it worked out surprisingly well.  The stuff is quite stable to cut and easy to work with. 

And props to Action for building the solid alum 'caps' on these platens, looks like very solid construction.

Now I want a set of six honeycombs in 16x22, it's so light at smaller sizes and what a pleasure that would be for a manual printer.  Action people- do you recommend them for manual printing?  I'm not sure if the force of indexing with your hands would become an issue.  Although, the force needed to index would be far lower with the lighter platens.


Hi - pardon the delayed reply. I was out of the office all of last week and yesterday. My desk is the one that monitors and replies to the blogs.

To answer your question - No, we do not typically advise the use of honeycomb on this size of pallet. The reason is that the solid aluminum is still more durable than the honeycomb. Also, the honeycomb is considerably more effort to produce and thus the cost is more.

Regarding the force concern: There is no reason for concern, from our experience.
Regarding the 'solid aluminum caps': Thank you. This finishing technique is an in-house developed solution that we have several custom built machines to assist us with. They add thick outside framing while looking beautiful.

Thanks for the questions and we hope we are able to provide additional service to you again.

Erik Naftal
Action Engineering, Inc.


Offline ZooCity

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Re: Cutting Honeycomb Aluminum
« Reply #16 on: February 21, 2012, 03:51:17 PM »
Thanks for catching up Erik.  I can see how honeycomb may not be advisable for 16x22 standard platens. 

I would see that as a luxury item to add to the manual press to reduce operator fatigue and would expect them to require more frequent replacement. 

Follow up ?:  Flashing, honeycomb and rubber.  M&R says no good, you guys seem to be ok with it, what's the skinny?