mark
New Member
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Post by mark on Sept 11, 2017 10:12:47 GMT
Having just taken delivery of a Carve King I am reluctant to start modifying it yet however this may change once I have some experience in using the machine.
My particular problem is that I want to be able to cut finger joints and dovetails and to do this it appears that I need to mount the work piece vertically instead of flat which requires a slot in the base of the machine. Has anyone done this? are there any reasons NOT to do it?
I have looked at several approaches to cutting box joints with the work pieces flat on the bed and they all seem to encounter the same problem in that you cannot cut a sharp internal corner using a round cutter - 1.5mm radius seems to be the sharpest you can realistically achieve
Mounting the piece vertically seems to solve the issue unless there are some clever joint designs that can be cut flat (apart from Mitres)
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Post by Derek the Admin on Sept 11, 2017 11:54:37 GMT
You could cut a slot in the bed for that I suppose. For what it's worth, you can get rid of internal radii by putting a dog bone in the corner. That may not give you a look you like, but I thought I would mention it.
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Post by aforww on Sept 11, 2017 13:40:35 GMT
I've got an easily accomplished plan for this already. I wouldn't just cut a permanently open slot as it sacrifices the integrity of table and makes warping far more likely. What I would do is mill put a 5/8" wide slot maybe 10" long. Put a 3/4" rabbit 1/4" deep. Mill an insert for the hole that sits into the rabbit and is screwed down when you're not using it just like an insert on a tablesaw. Can all be done with machine.
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Post by Jerry on Sept 12, 2017 22:11:21 GMT
I thought about the same thing and thought if you spaced the router out farther, hang it 2" more forward, you might get what you need without modifying the original machine. Yes you will see more flexing in the machine but for only wood it may be ok.
90 degree gear drive on the spindle is another overly complex solution ...
Aforww has a great idea.
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rh
New Member
Assembling a CarveKing
Posts: 14
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Post by rh on Jan 15, 2018 6:22:41 GMT
Having just taken delivery of a Carve King I am reluctant to start modifying it yet however this may change once I have some experience in using the machine. My particular problem is that I want to be able to cut finger joints and dovetails and to do this it appears that I need to mount the work piece vertically instead of flat which requires a slot in the base of the machine. Has anyone done this? are there any reasons NOT to do it? I have looked at several approaches to cutting box joints with the work pieces flat on the bed and they all seem to encounter the same problem in that you cannot cut a sharp internal corner using a round cutter - 1.5mm radius seems to be the sharpest you can realistically achieve Mounting the piece vertically seems to solve the issue unless there are some clever joint designs that can be cut flat (apart from Mitres) I have a Carve King on order, and also need to cut finger / dovetail joints. is there a way to cut these joints with the wood flat on the table? or can the wood be mounted vertical? |
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mark
New Member
Posts: 10
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Post by mark on Jan 15, 2018 7:30:09 GMT
Having just taken delivery of a Carve King I am reluctant to start modifying it yet however this may change once I have some experience in using the machine. My particular problem is that I want to be able to cut finger joints and dovetails and to do this it appears that I need to mount the work piece vertically instead of flat which requires a slot in the base of the machine. Has anyone done this? are there any reasons NOT to do it? I have looked at several approaches to cutting box joints with the work pieces flat on the bed and they all seem to encounter the same problem in that you cannot cut a sharp internal corner using a round cutter - 1.5mm radius seems to be the sharpest you can realistically achieve Mounting the piece vertically seems to solve the issue unless there are some clever joint designs that can be cut flat (apart from Mitres) I have a Carve King on order, and also need to cut finger / dovetail joints. is there a way to cut these joints with the wood flat on the table? or can the wood be mounted vertical? I have used the Carve king for a couple of months now and have the germ of a few ideas but have not had the time to put them into practice. The main issue when cutting finger joints with the board flat is that you cannot cut a sharp inside corner. You are limited by the smallest diameter cutter you have. If you are cutting dovetails than you have the additional problem of cutting the pins which have 2 sides which are not vertical. In theory Carve king can almost solve this problem by treating each pin or tail as an extrusion and round off the top edge to match the radius of the cutter you are using, you can also add in the non vertical sides of the pins. The only area where will idea fails is right in the inside corners where the top edge of each pin ends. This could be easily fixed by hand. It will take me a while to figure out how to draw this for accurate machining but it may work. Another approach is easier but means you need to cut extra pieces of wood. If when making a box you add in a corner post with your joints machined on 2 adjacent faces then the issue of sharp corners goes away because you can cut the fingers on the side to exactly match a cutout on the face of the corner pieces. the bonus here is you can make fancy shapes to make a decorative joint on your corners. Another possibility is you machine all the pins with rounded corners and leave the “D” shaped gaps as a feature, maybe fill them with a contrasting wooden plug. |
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Post by ahahlberg on Jan 20, 2018 6:17:24 GMT
I've got an easily accomplished plan for this already. I wouldn't just cut a permanently open slot as it sacrifices the integrity of table and makes warping far more likely. What I would do is mill put a 5/8" wide slot maybe 10" long. Put a 3/4" rabbit 1/4" deep. Mill an insert for the hole that sits into the rabbit and is screwed down when you're not using it just like an insert on a tablesaw. Can all be done with machine. I haven't got my Carve King yet but I think this is the right kind of approach - to cut a slot in both layers of the table so you can bring the board ends up from the bottom. In addition to the milled liner for the hole in the bottom to maintain structural integrity I was thinking of bringing in a clamping bar in the slot that threaded out to the front. I was also considering replacing the upper board of the pair of boards that form the base with a T-slot aluminum base which might also act to maintain dimensional stability. With such a rig - an extruded aluminum T-slot layer 3/4" over the standard baseboard bottom layer reinforced with a milled through slot somewhere between 5/8 and 1", possibly 2", wide, 10 to 12" long, you'd still have a pretty rigid surface for other work but the ability to bring in boards edge-on from below and use standard dovetail bits for cutting dovetails in addition to cutting mortises and tenons on longer stock using regular end mills - but limited to the length that would fit under your Carve King. Obviously isn't a universal solution but I think it would be a viable way to go up to 10" to 12" narrow stock like drawers sides and, depending on your design whole furniture pieces. When I get my Carve King I'm going to try it out. But if someone is in a position to try it now I'd love to share some thoughts on how to go about it. I only ordered my Carve King a week ago so I'm probably two to three weeks out from getting it which means a month or more before I'd be ready to implement this idea. Biggest challenge I've run into so far is finding someone selling wider pieces of t-slot extruded aluminum - 4" is about the widest I've seen but I'm still looking. But from what I've seen, the Carve King's base table is composed of two layers of MDF which makes replacing the upper layer with a t-slot track a viable way to build this. |
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Post by Bruce on Jan 20, 2018 21:42:34 GMT
Found this on YouTube. May be of interest.
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Post by ahahlberg on Jan 21, 2018 4:25:05 GMT
berogers - Exactly - thanks for posting this! I like his jig for holding the board. A little curious at the number of z-axis return to absolute zero moves he apparently made but good tips on laying out the job. I also got to looking at how we might do that for a Carve King table. I realized my table saw's dado blade throat plate might work as the reinforcing element for the Carve King table. Might order another throat plate for this purpose once I get my Carve King and get familiar with it. The throat plate for the dado on my 10" table saw has a 8"x1.25" opening and is made of .125" steel so it might work - plenty of margin for drilling and countersinking some screws to mount it to the base.
And a shoutout to everyone on this forum for the quality of the questions and the quality of the answers - thanks - can't wait to get to try this stuff myself.
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Post by Bruce on Jan 21, 2018 20:29:06 GMT
Here is another video cutting dovetail joints without the board placed on the end to cut. Must be a different type of dovetail joint?
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Post by ahahlberg on Jan 22, 2018 5:14:51 GMT
Yeah - it solves the tool radius issue by using rounded corners on the dovetails on both sides of the joint. That's probably not a bad approach since it solves the problem without resorting to vertical board mounting - but kind of violates the traditional dovetail joint look. But it might make for a stronger joint overall by spreading the load concentrated on the short end of the dovetail over the tool radius arc. But for traditional look dovetails it still looks like the table slot is the only approach - or shortening the bed or extending the gantry to reach over the edge. But for us non-professional wood workers using the machine for multiple purposes I think the slot is a better approach. We'll see after I get my machine and get through all the other things I want to try before I start making mods!
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