How to Make Shadow Boards

One of the areas that Red Box Aviation specialises in is tool control, enabling you to manage and store your tools more effectively than ever before. After all, a world without lost tools is a place where we all want to be, right?

A common question that we receive is whether shadow boarding and shadow foam are the same thing, and the answer is no, not quite. In practice they both offer the same solution – a place where you can store your tools – but whereas shadow foam is perfect for mobile tool storage and general mobile storage, shadow boards hang on walls near to the appropriate areas where certain tasks are carried.

 

What Exactly is a Shadow Board?

Shadow Boarding sees your tools and equipment sitting in foam and then hung on a wall to achieve an organised workplace, resulting in your tools and other equipment being efficiently stored in appropriate areas close to the desired working area.

A user may have multiple shadow boards in their workshop, with each board containing a different set of tools depending on the jobs required within each area of their work space. This greatly cuts down on the amount of time it takes to pick out tools from a shadow board from further away, meaning that each job is completed more quickly and efficiently.

 

What are the Benefits of Shadow Boarding?

  • Quickly highlights any missing tools
  • Improves workplace organisation
  • Can be fully colour coded
  • Fully customisable to your requirements
  • Not just limited to tools

 

So, how exactly do we make a shadow board? We use custom foam that is then cut with a CNC Router, which is a computer controlled system. The tools required are then scanned using an electric pen and board, which provides us with an accurate drawing, which then creates tool paths that are directed to the CNC Router and then “tool path lines” are cut extremely accurately into the foam layer.

All of Red Box’s aviation tool boxes comes complete with shadow foam, whilst bespoke tool kits can also be created to include spare foam too.

We can provide bespoke shadow boards to match any requirements, so please contact us today on +44 (0) 3333 580457 (or +1 (770) 709-5169 for international customers) to discuss your needs.