I am making a custom cabinet for myself and I have been held up on a machining strategy that I may be over thinking. I figure many people on this board may have run into something similar and have likely found a creative solution which is currently eluding me...
The setup is multiple consecutive layers of baltic birch that will be laminated together to form door fronts. I have everything nested on (8) sheets of 3/4" Baltic Birch. I have maintained a gap of at least 3/8" between all of the parts. As you can see, there is occasion where there is a thin tapered piece between the parts that I suspect would be all too happy to snap my bit the second it is cut loose.
Attachment 453762
Attachment 453764
The machine cutting this will be a Shopbot Alpha with a 5HP spindle with a 10HP vacuum hold down table. I am planning on using a 1/4" compression bit cutting a 3/8" deep clearing pass and then all of the way through to the bottom of the cut. The vacuum table is great until the pieces are small or more cuts are made in the stock.
There are 100's of parts so onion skinning the profile cut is not really a great option. I'd like the profile cut to be all of the way through except for tabs that are easily removed. These tabs are located at the tips and at the mid points of the long parts.
My current approach would be to pocket these interstitial slivers of stock, leaving 1/8" on the parts and then run the profile cut... My concern is that these pieces are too delicate to machine if they are fully relieved from the sheets and that they will move away (or toward) the cutter. This is why I added a tab at the mid span of the part that attaches to a continuous block.
Then a bunch of options started swirling in my mind like cutting every other profile, or onion skinning the pockets, etc... Am I over thinking this? Is there a simple solution I am not seeing? I would be grateful for any advice!
Thank you very much!
Brian