Blind dado question

[Tillman Stevens]

I was reading through the forums and I saw a post where someone said blind dados were a problem for some production sharing providers.

Is this still the case and will using blind dado contruction increase my costs with a production sharer?

Thanks

[Mark Taylor]

Tillman...

I'm not aware of any problems with regards to cutting blind dados unless it has come up quite recently.

Without going back and reading the post - I would guess what the post was referring to with regards to blind dado's is creating what we call flip-ops. Better know as flip operations - when constructing cabinets we try to create all the parts so that dado's are all on one side of the sheet. Depending on how you construct you cabinet this isn't always possible and so you create a situation where once a part has been cut out of the sheet it needs to be turned over for another cut on the back side - flip-op!

They generally are not a problem simply time consuming as you must load each piece on the router indivdually - enter the lable number assigned to the piece and run the operation on the backside....most production sharing members will have an additional charge for this operation in addition to the normal fee per sheet.


Mark

[Mike Seisser]

Tillman,

Mike Murray (member here) is using blind dados almost exclusively, if I recall correctly, for the cabinets he produces. He's going to be doing some cutting for me in the near future, and has advised me to consider blind dado construction for a number of reasons, not the least of which is, he's got the fit clearances etc. down to a science.

Mike

[Tillman Stevens]

Thanks. That is the information I was looking for. I don't remember exactly which post it was I read, but I do recall the flop-ops and getting proper fit tolerances being the issues.

I would like to use blind dados nearly exclusivly as well, simply from an ease of assembly and strenght of construction perspective.

One more question, if I use blind dados exclusively, but have back flush to top and deck it doesn't look like it would be possible to assemble the cabinet. Is that, in fact, the case.

If so, what solution do you use for this?

I was considering using blind dado on all connections except the back, where I would use full dados.

[Roger Kirkpatrick]

Tillman,
If you use full dado for the back and have it flush at the top and deck you can slide the back into the dados. Then staple the back to the deck and top. This squares the cabinet and adds strength. It will also eliminate a flip.

[Michael S Murray]

Hey Tillman,
Blind Dado is a great way to build cabinets, you do need to design your cabinets to use as few flip ops as possible, as this can introduce slight inaacuracies and add a couple bucks to a cutting job. Sometimes you can eliminate them with no or slight modification, other times you cannot avoid them. i would start with a smaller job and send the file to your cutting service and let them look through it and offer ways to make your design more router friendly without sacrificing your design. I will attach one of my typical base cabinets and a typical wall cabinet that I use for my custom cabinet business. I use 3/4 two sided clearcote maple for the total cabinets. This helps with flip ops and only one material helps in yield and labor enough to offset the slight increase of material cost per sheet. Never mind it is as solid as a tank when glued up! The base cabinet uses no flip ops and the wall cabinet requires one in the deck and one on the top. Hope this helps

[Tillman Stevens]

Thanks for the example.

Did you put those dados in manually using the parts editor?
They don't look like the full or blind dados I was getting, and when I looked at the construction settings, the joint types were blank in most joints.


Never Mind. I just noticed the blind dado settings, doh!

Thanks again for the example. That helps tremendously!

Tillman