Counter top joins

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Neville Bastian
Guru Member
Posts: 622
Joined: Fri, May 20 2005, 6:48PM
Company Name: Classic Cabinetry
Location: Albany Western Australia
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Counter top joins

Post by Neville Bastian »

In my location Wilsonart type laminated tops are still a main type of counter.
I have some Gcode cenerating software I was given in 2007 but it doesnt do 100% of the work on the counter.
I was wondering how other Ecabinet users did there work on the counter tops. Is it ecabinets, Autocad dxf or other means.
Just looking at options that doesnt require a expensive outlay.
If you could list what you can do with the software and what it cant do would be helpful.
Regards

Neville
Neville Australia
Stuart Douglas
Senior Member
Posts: 157
Joined: Fri, Apr 10 2015, 7:57AM
Company Name: Bergman Custom Casework LLC
Country: UNITED STATES

Re: Counter top joins

Post by Stuart Douglas »

The process I use, YMMV:

tops that are rectangles: cut on the saw. no sense in tying up the router for this. our saw is not fully integrated for this, so I make a quick excel doc (attached) and draw them with the borders for cells. probably not the fastest but very clear for the assembly crew.

Tops that dog-leg or have non-rectilinear shapes: dxf from acad. quick and concise. The shape is still drawn in the excel doc, but the deck substrate is cut on the router then sent to the assembly crew to build up and laminate.

Lately on commercial work we have been doing rectangles only, with 3mm edgeband (machine banded) and then removing the edgeband where the two rectangles join to make dog-legs and other shapes. Not all PL selections facilitate this, so discretion is needed here to see what works for each job.

eCabS has countertops in the room layout, but I've never felt the need to put them in, bc we don't even use the room layout (I use the batch list exclusively). I'm sure someone will chime in with an example of them rendered and cut complete with eCabS though.
Attachments
sample.xls
(53.5 KiB) Downloaded 283 times
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Neville Bastian
Guru Member
Posts: 622
Joined: Fri, May 20 2005, 6:48PM
Company Name: Classic Cabinetry
Location: Albany Western Australia
Contact:

Re: Counter top joins

Post by Neville Bastian »

Thanks Stuart for the input.
I should have been a bit clearer our substrate is 32mm 1 1/4 hmr particleboard which is laminated. The tops are cut to size from raw HMR P/B plus extra length on the Thermwood, postformed laminated in the spray shop area then returned to the Thermwood to do the joins which are masons mitres and cut actual length. The edges of the raw substrate are hand routered as we dont have a spindle moulder. I havent worked out how do do the bullnosed edges on the Thermwood because using a ball cutter is a long process time wise. Havent worked out a way to trick it using a bullnosed cutter.
Regards

Neville
Neville Australia
Stuart Douglas
Senior Member
Posts: 157
Joined: Fri, Apr 10 2015, 7:57AM
Company Name: Bergman Custom Casework LLC
Country: UNITED STATES

Re: Counter top joins

Post by Stuart Douglas »

Doing the bull nose with the profile modeler? Sounds like a recipe for disaster. You could conceivably cut the bull nose on the router with a set of vacuum pods (lifts the work from the work surface) and the correct bit, but I thought you'd cut it before it get postformed? My understanding of the process you use is probably incorrect. There are bullnose cutting router bits out there, though it might be necessary to have one made for that thickness.
_____________
Win 10 Pro 64 bit on MSI Z390M Pro4
Intel core i7 9700KF 3.6GHz (OC 4.2Ghz)
32 gig RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
NVME SSM2HD 1TB NTFS
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