Dovetail Drawer settings

[Terry Davis]

In the drawer box designer, drawer box construction setting, global settings what should the settings be for dovetail drawers be (being cut out of 1/2" baltic birch). There is 10 empty boxes to fill in! This is our first attempt at dovetail drawers..

[Todd Miller]

Terry,
Goto this link on our Thermwood website....

http://order.ecabinetsystems.com/update ... Manual.htm

Goto the "Dovetail Drawer Boxes" section and read the information there. If you still have questions afterwards give us a call and we can help you out.

[Jody Wilmes]

I use the default settings...even for the material thickness. Once I'm at the machine, I usually end up having to drop the dovetail tool about .03" to get a good tight fit. The Baltic Birch we get is 9-ply, and undersized by about .03".....which is why I end up dropping the daylight value by that amount for the dovetail tool. You want the DoveTail tool to "scratch" or "fuzz" the surface when it is cutting. Too deep, or too shallow will cause problems.
The only thing you may have to do, is adjust Dovetail Radius Crunch value within Control Nesting, which I usually have set to .03". Todd's link does provide a lot of helpful information on the subject if this method doesn't work for you.

[Damon Nabors]

Could someone out there that is good with programming write a test program for the dovetail drawers. I know I don't like waisting material and having to load a drawer box and pick a front and a left side and cut it out to see if they fit properly. What I would like to see is, a piece maybe 5 or 6 inches wide by maybe a foot long with female pins on one end and male pins on the other end and then cut the piece in half so you could slide them together to see if the fit is good or not. If you could do it with one piece and then cut it in half it would be faster and burn up less material. I have tried it with two small pieces to save material, but then they tend to move. with one larger piece, it would hold down better and take less material.

Thanks,
Damon