Sharing Carbide Create Dovetail Files

keep us posted please :slight_smile: 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:

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:

image

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:

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.

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See:

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

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:

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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.

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.

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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?

Using a vertical fixture allows cutting dovetails which have a traditional slope (not limited to the angles possible from a V tool) and creates crisp sharp joins not limited by the rounding imposed by an endmill on a piece of stock held flat.

The picture is not using a V tool though, it’s using a 1/8 flat end mill and the joints are through joints. I am assuming you are talking about the “armpits” of the dovetails that have to be 1/8 rounded. But this is largely offset by making the last millimetre of the pin slopes vertical.
The thing is that the advantage of milling the whole thing flat - and in one session - may outweigh the vertical jig.
To create the little slopes on the pins could be pretty hellish in CC though.

I’ve been looking into ways to do joinery which allows cutting parts out in a single setup, see:

https://willadams.gitbook.io/design-into-3d/radiused-fingerjoints

and

https://willadams.gitbook.io/design-into-3d/blind-miter-and-hidden-spline

Moreover, I don’t see how the dovetail joints could work without post processing unless one is introducing a tool which will do the undercut or post-processing the parts by rounding off the bottom of them so that they will fit.

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