A template cutting machine is a simple, robust tool — most “machine problems” in template rooms are really maintenance debts coming due. This checklist keeps a machine cutting clean grooves for years, organized by cadence and by the failure each task prevents. (Choosing a machine? Start with the buying guide.)
Daily (end of shift, ten minutes)
Clear chips and dust — everywhere. PVC chips are light and static-charged; they migrate into linear rails, rack teeth and the spindle fan. Brush and vacuum the bed, rails and gantry. If you cut epoxy that day, be thorough: glass dust grinds away at whatever it settles on.
Wipe the bed / check the underlay. Debris under the sheet becomes a bump in the cut. Check the felt underlay for grooves cut too deep — a chewed underlay stops holding vacuum evenly.
Look at the last groove. The best daily diagnostic is free: clean walls mean all is well; fuzz, melt or chatter mean a bit change or a feeds/speeds review before tomorrow’s sheets (bit wear signs here).
Weekly (half an hour)
Rails and racks: clean, then lubricate per the manual — dry rails wear; over-greased rails collect dust into abrasive paste (worse when cutting epoxy). Collet and spindle taper: remove the collet, clean chips from the taper — a dirty collet causes runout, and runout reads as “bad bits” while it quietly ruins grooves. Vacuum system: check pump filter and listen for leaks along the bed gasket; weakening hold-down is the top cause of scrapped sheets and shows up gradually. Cables and hoses: a visual pass over the drag chain.
Monthly
Geometry check: cut a test square and measure diagonals; out-of-square means the gantry took a knock or racks need adjustment — catch it on a test piece, not a production sheet. Backlash feel: jog each axis and feel for play. Software/controller: back up machine parameters and tool tables (the file that hurts most to lose is the one nobody exported). Consumable audit: count bits, collets and underlay stock against the reorder list.
The spares that prevent long stoppages
Freight from the machine’s factory takes weeks; these parts should live in the drawer: router bits (a full box of each type in use — the cheapest downtime insurance in the room), spare collets (they wear and get dropped), bed underlay felt (cut-to-length replacement), and the vacuum pump filter. All ride along in any consolidated materials order — the accessories catalog covers bits and underlay; ask us to add pump filters matched to your machine model.
The habit that matters more than the list
Assign the machine an owner. Shared-by-everyone machines are maintained by no one, and the decline is invisible day to day — until a batch of templates comes off with ragged grooves before a shipment. One named technician, this checklist taped to the gantry, and the template room runs like the tooling shop it is.
Machine sourcing, bits and underlay consolidate into one shipment; send your machine model and materials mix for a spares kit quote.
