I know this has been brought up numerous times but… I’ve been struggling with a simple coaster design which has a pocket on the B side to mesh with the A side of another coaster. That way they can securely stack when not in use. I know there’s other methods such as using dowels but I’m stubborn and want to get the flip frame method figured out. I’ve watched Kevin’s YouTube video numerous times and read all kinds of posts on how to do it but still cannot get the B side pocket to line up with the A side raised area. Its offset from the centre of the coaster by about 2 mm. I’ve attached pics of my results and the .c2d files I’m using.
Any advise or help would be appreciated. In the first pic I stopped the cut on the B side when I realized it wasn’t lining up.
Hay Jeff,
I made a similar thing yesterday (Xmas tree thingy. I’ve not done this before but, well why not, I’ll have a go. My material was square, similar to yours. I marked the centre on both sides of the MDF and zeroed XY &Z on the centre mark. Used metal clamps to hold it down ( like to live a bit dangerous) and set it away.
All good on side A, flipped material and re-zeroed and bingo!! The result really surprised me with a hey!! look at this! It’s a good feeling. I’ll try and post a couple of pics. Cheers,Ben
Because the coasters are circles, I would probably mount a peice of scrap(not as thick as the coaster material though) to the wasteboard & make a cutout that is the exact size of the circle & mark the centre of it with a V-bit in the wasteboard.
Then after doing a bunch of Side-A coasters, reset XY zero for the circle holder center, then pop coasters into the holder for Side-B machining. Just gotta change the XY zero in the project to the center of stock & center the design around that.
The only reliable way I’ve done double-sided flip machining is by cutting a square box perimeter around the design. Then securing indexing rails to the wasteboard against 2 adjacent sides of the box before flipping it. Alternatively, you could use dowels symetrically placed around center.
It doesn’t take much to throw off double-sided machining.
How are you setting your zero to the “L” bracket? If it’s not exact the 2nd side will be off.
If you touch the tool to the edge of the “L” bracket the tool should be at X0.125" or Y0.125"
Check it in several spots to also make sure it’s square.
I would likely start with a square corner on my stock, skip the flip frame, and flip the job like this… using the same “J” corner for both sides.
Tod, I locate the original A side material in the green L bracket and use my bit zero to zero x/y/z at bottom left. I rechecked zero before cutting the B side as well. The A side material is square and the flip frame is also square so there shouldn’t be an issue there. The flip direction you show is also the way I flipped the flipframe.
Thanks for all the advice and suggestions guys… I’ll try some of the methods you suggest and keep at it until I get it right or run out of waste material to cut into firewood
I’ve been struggling with a simple coaster design which has a pocket on the B side to mesh with the A side of another coaster. That way they can securely stack when not in use. I know there’s other methods such as using dowels but I’m stubborn and want to get the flip frame method figured out. I’ve watched Kevin’s YouTube video numerous times and read all kinds of posts on how to do it but still cannot get the B side pocket to line up with the A side raised area. Its offset from the centre of the coaster by about 2 mm. I’ve attached pics of my results and the .c2d files I’m using.
