It took three laid up blanks and cutting time was about 3 minutes per drawer over a lot of something like 50 drawers total.Ĭontributor J, as I'm sure you know, when doing dovetails conventionally, the front/back piece acts as a chip breaker for the sides. I think the last time we tracked it, we were cutting for two kitchens. The router might take up to an hour to run a sheet 37" x 120" depending on the drawer sizes. You have to slow down the cut a bit and use sharp tools, but they're great. 625 and then we put them on the router and nest them just like plywood. He lays up 37" wide or less blanks out of soft maple, brings them to our shop and we run them through the wide belt to. I do have one cutting customer who still likes to use solid maple. They're great - not had a doctor or lawyer or factory worker offer to pay me the extra $35 per drawer I charge for solid maple that used to be my standard. I have cut thousands out of 5/8 Baltic birch. Overall, I get good quality parts and it’s a lot easier and faster than the old router and jig process. Our table has two zones, so I can place a program on each zone and run it in shuttle mode, which speeds up the process. I do have it programmed where I could do both sides if I have a job with a lot of the same size pieces. I’ve set it up where it only does 1 side of the board at a time so I don’t have to keep changing pods. If it is a front/back, vertical routing is performed. If it is a side, the aggregate is used for the horizontal routing. I set it up where I have a parametric program that I can specify if it is a front/back or a side.
Anybody else actually using it? I'm curious how it reacts to plywood and solid in the real world.Ĭontributor J, could you tell me more about how you laid this out? I would like to try and do some dovetails on my Busellato! I am really impressed by this Vortex system. Let us know when you run it and how strong and attractive it is. Worked great! Not blazing fast, but much better than using a hand router and jig.įor us 3axis guys, I am curious about the Vortex. The other bit was placed in my aggregate and did the horizontal routing on the side pieces. One was used for the standard vertical routing on the fronts and backs. I used two standard 1/2" dovetail router bits. I just ran my first set of solid maple dovetail drawers using our Homag CNC. I bought one about a month ago, but have not had a chance to use it yet. I think Router Cad has a dovetail drawer box option you can add on. It is only a simple fat joint with no holding power. The final product is a fake, a dovetail look-alike. No flatbed CNC with E-Cabinets can cut dovetail. It is a slower process because you have to stand there and keep changing your pieces of wood, but it does work.
We have also cut dovetails using oak or maple. We use 5/8 Baltic birch plywood as our standard dovetailed drawer box.
We have a Thermwood router and use eCabinets to cut dovetails. If any of you are doing this successfully, what are your time savings over doing dovetails with a hand router and dovetail jig? I know it's faster to order them, but if a CNC could do it efficiently, I might give it a try. Are any of you cutting out hardwood dovetail drawers on a flatbed CNC? If so, what are you using for a program? I know that E-Cabinets has a system, but I've only seen them cut out plywood drawers at their demos.