WillAdams this is some awesome work you have done do you have a copy of the carbide create file? I am confident if you provide the file I can do some additional work on top of the great stuff that you have done. What is the best way to upload the file to the forum. I am sure others will benefit from this too.
If you follow along you should be able to make your own Carbide Create file.
For the pins, just add some circles to help envision how the toolpath should work:
Then go back and adjust paths as needed for:
- cuts w/ a 1/4" endmill to clear the pockets to the depth of the cut
- clearance for the endmill when making the pockets
- draw in paths for the dovetail bit to cut along a no offset contour path
- then verify that things will fit together
- then arrange the paths in Carbide Create to cut the pair with the tails being cut out of the board held vertically and the pins cut out of the board held in place on the machine
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Drawing in the toolpaths, one can verify them by assigning suitable strokes:
Adjust slightly to not have overlapping paths:
Arrange things so that you’ll be able to cut the pins on the horizontal board on the machine, and clamp the board for the tails to the front:
Import that into Carbide Create and adjust the size to scale and set things to a centered origin:
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.
Just for compleatness’ sake, there are a couple of commercial software programs which address this sort of thing. You may want to consider:
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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.
keep us posted please 
looks really cool
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.
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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.
Did you ever try this out?
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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:
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:
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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:
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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
You would want to open:
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.
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