Sharing Carbide Create Dovetail Files

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

Set the origin to the center of the stock and align the corner of the board against it. Adjust the pockets and cut them to the desired depth using a suitable endmill, then set up a different tool for the dovetail bit and assign a toolpath which has a depth per pass sufficient to ensure that only one pass will be made.

dovetails.c2d (155.5 KB)

EDIT: Sleeping on it, I believe the board which is held vertically needs to have its toolpaths adjusted — they need to be cut all the way through — it’ll also need to be shorter by twice the blind depth left in the other board.

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

Just for compleatness’ sake, there are a couple of commercial software programs which address this sort of thing. You may want to consider:

• http://www.tailmaker.net/

Applications from Tailmaker developer available

has available a number of programs which used to be available commercially as was pointed out by @neilferreri Puzzle My Joint — Generate joints for frames and other wooden items, or create jigsaw puzzle patterns and make them on your CNC machine. Fingermaker — Make complex finger joints on your CNC machine. Mazemaker — Generate single or double sided mazes and make them on your CNC machine. Guillochograph — This is a utility that will generate decorative patterns. It can replicate patterns u…

• JointCAM - CNC Dovetails and Box Joints

[jedeyejed00 (Jed)]

Hi William
I just ordered the software from tailmaker. it seems like it will do the trick. I will test it out this weekend and keep you posted. Thanks so much for all you EXCELLENT assistance.

[orlrobinson (mark robinson)]

keep us posted please looks really cool

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

Glad the commercial software looks suitable for you — I’ve been considering being one (or both) of those myself.

In the meanwhile, turns out that there are a couple of options for 3D modeling these in OpenSCAD:

• https://www.chrisfinke.com/2017/01/10/generating-dovetails-in-openscad/
• https://github.com/hugokernel/OpenSCAD_Dovetail
• https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:27466

So I’m going to revisit 3D modeling and sort out simultaneously modeling and drawing these up so that we can get paths cut.

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

Okay, making progress on the 3D modeling (w/ some help from the OpenSCAD mailing list/forum):

EDIT: Subtracting one from the other is easy — now I need to work out the toolpaths / geometry to make that as an actual cut.

[neilferreri (Neil Ferreri Ω)]

@jedeyejed00

I just ordered the software from tailmaker.

Did you ever try this out?

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

In Camotics it’s possible to enter a dovetail bit as a stub endmill:

which then allows one to preview how the file will cut:

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

I believe it’d be helpful to have a jig to ensure that the parts are lined up accurately:

dovetail_fixture.c2d (132.1 KB)

Though I’ve been using it only to line things up to clamp for the cut:

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

Workholding gave way for the next to the last cut, and didn’t quite get things lined up on the last, but at least this proves the concept:

[cusoak (Jeff Peters)]

Will I downloaded the dovetail file and when I click on to it opens the connect to cutter .
So what am I doing wrong
Jeff

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

You would want to open:

http://community.carbide3d.com/uploads/default/original/2X/9/9361326a9e42c5318b00fb18a75ccfe8c7165743.c2d

in Carbide Create and make toolpaths suited to your machine — hang on though, I’ve got a generalized fixture which I’ll be posting (along w/ a hardware list and photos showing it in use) which should work better.

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

See:

Fixture for cutting vertical joints

[ispot]

@WillAdams http://www.tailmaker.net/ is no longer available.

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

Yeah, there’s a rumour that the program will be made freely available since the developer EDIT: retired, but I haven’t heard anything beyond that.

EDIT: See:

Applications from Tailmaker developer available

has available a number of programs which used to be available commercially as was pointed out by @neilferreri Puzzle My Joint — Generate joints for frames and other wooden items, or create jigsaw puzzle patterns and make them on your CNC machine. Fingermaker — Make complex finger joints on your CNC machine. Mazemaker — Generate single or double sided mazes and make them on your CNC machine. Guillochograph — This is a utility that will generate decorative patterns. It can replicate patterns u…

[JVarn (Jon Varner)]

Did you really just clamp the board directly to the frame? I think I may have been way overthinking my need to mount a clamping system to my table.

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

Yes. The fixture I made is for fine/consistent positioning, then I have a pair of clamps which are ground down to fit in-between the front frame and spoilboard and use them with a suitable board — eventually I’ll make one which has a slot to hold things together so it’s not quite as fiddly.

[helipaddy (Patrick Wills)]

I don’t understand why a dovetail box cannot be cut in CC Pro without needing any vertical jig. Vcarve does it by making the dovetails go all the way through, so the bottom of the box is cut upside down. That should be possible in CC Pro using a 3d shape. What am I missing @WillAdams?