I’m making some Shaker style cabinet doors and want to use a final pass at 10% stepover and .5mm deep so I have less sanding to do, but if I use the Pocket tool to hog out most of the material and then use the Advanced Vcarve tool it doesn’t cut sharp inside corners with the 30 degree Vee bit for the recessed panel part of the doors. If I only use Advanced Vcarve I have to pick either a low stopover for a better surface finish or higher stepover for a faster cut, but at least it cuts sharp inside corners with the 30 degree Vee bit.
Is there some way to first remove the majority of the material and then come back with a finish pass with low stepover and shallow depth of cut?
So run Advanced Vcarve once from 0-6.5mm with 50% stepover and then run another Advanced Vcarve with 10% stepover and starting at 6.5mm to full depth of 7.0?
Use the clearing tool for the advanced V-carve as your bottom finish pass.
Offset the rectangle inward by the width of the 15° wall. (0.067" for a 1/4" pocket)
Rough that down to 0.230" (5.85 mm), leaving 0.020" (0.5mm)
Now select the outer rectangle & Advanced v-carve with the clearing tool with your 10% stepover.
Set the depth on your clearing tool to something greater than the pocket depth so it only makes one pass.
I created a 3mm offset inside and used the Pocket tool to remove material down to 6.5mm and then used the Advance Vcarve tool with 10% stepover and the simulation appears to produce sharp corners. I tried this before but I must not have used enough offset because the simulation showed rounded inside corners. I’ll try this method on a test piece and see how it goes.
Advanced V-Carve can use 2 tools, a clearing tool (any endmill you want), and the Vee-bit.
It’s your choice which end mill you use. With the smaller stepover you could get away with a smaller tool & get into the corners better. But either way there will be a small bit left over in the corners where the Vee tool clears out that will be rough. A quick swipe with a chisel will take care of it.
Multiply the depth by the tangent of 15° (0.268) to get the minimum offset. If you’re 11.2mm deep, then the offset would be 3mm.
Ok, that’s what I thought you meant but I wanted to be sure there wasn’t something I was missing. I tried the method you suggested with a 2mm inside offset for the pocket path and when it still produced rounded corners I thought it just wouldn’t work. I’ll try it with a 3mm offset next time. And thanks for the trigonometry lesson! I’ve long since forgotten all of that stuff.
Have you considered cutting the door in two parts? I.e. cut out a 1/2" rectangle for the “base” and then cut the stile/rail as one piece out of 1/4" material. Then you can glue them together and avoid the time it takes to perform a pocket operation. It worked really well when I tried it. Here’s a youtube video that gave me the idea.
I thought about cutting out each individual rail/stile, but I opted to cut it out as one piece so it would be seamless. I’m sure I’ll find a use for the leftover material in the middle.
At work we make shaker style doors from 3/4" mdf, by cutting out the center area from the back, leaving a lip for a 1/4" mdf panel inserted from the back. It’s a minimal pocket operation for the lip, and then a contour to remove the center piece. You get a front face that doesn’t require much finishing, and you can fill the edge around the panel insert with DAP so there’s no crack, and then prime and paint.
