Drawer Slide Front Mounting Hole - Incorrect Orientation

[Sean Jakob]

Ryan

When I create a drawer Front mounting block pattern like this:

Hole Pattern Screenshot

Hole Pattern.jpg (12.26 KiB) Viewed 37473 times

The orientation of the front clip fixing holes is wrong as per the following:

Wrong orientation of Front Fixing holes

Wrong Orientation.jpg (55.29 KiB) Viewed 37473 times

As you can see from above, the front fixing holes are being drilled into the edge of the drawer front rather than the back face



Am I creating the hole pattern wrong? or is it just the program having a bad day?

Sean

[jason galbraith]

Hate to tell you this, but what you are trying to achieve is not able to be done. You are not the only person who needs this feature. Why doesn't it work when you can do hinge boring and mount boring at the same time? I don't know. If you look through my posts in the forums, you will see I've brought this issue up more than once. The only thing you can do is to manually put the holes in with part editor and then constrain them. Takes ages if you use multiple different metal sided draws like we do.

[Sean Jakob]

Ryan (Thermwood)

**Note - This probelm only exists for people using metal sided drawer systems such as Blum Metabox, Blum Tandem Box, Grass Nova Pro, Hettich Multitech, Hettich Innotech etc.

If the program is applying the holes, but simply orientating them the wrong way, and if as Jason pointed out, the hinge patterns correctly apply the holes into the back face of the doors and the inside face of the carcase at the same time, shouldn't this be a simple thing to fix rather than to simply ignore.

It is an inconvenience to have to apply the hole patterns manuall to the back face of the drawer every time a new drawer configuration is required. It is also very tedious to try to remember (or hit the technical manuals) every time I want to create a new drawer layout on the fly. The relationship between the front fixing hole bracket holes and the runner holes is critical. There is no room for error.

I have created some manual holes for the front fixing clips in the back face of the drawers, and then restrained them, but this is only helpful for the same or similar drawer layouts. If you need to change the drawer heights or configuration, it has to be done all over again. Also when I change the drawer front from one style to another, all of my manually added holes dissappear and I have to go through the adding process all over again.

Could we please have this orientation problem resolved so that everone who ever uses metal sided drawer systems will be as happy as a pig in sh*^. Please Please Please

Do people in the USA use metal sided drawer systems? If so, how do you cabbys in the US deal with this problem?

Sean

[Michael S Murray]

HI Sean,
We use Zargens for commercial work, but we have dedicated drills and press for them. I can understand your frustration though.
JUst thinking out loud, can you call the drawer front a door and ........well forget that, I already over ruled myself on that one........
Cant think of anything to help right now, but I will post if I think of anything in the future that might help.

[Sean Jakob]

Mike
Would it help you if eCabinets did apply these holes correctly?

Sean

[jason galbraith]

Just to nudge this again. Different set of draws again today. More manual placing and constraining. Anyone from Thermwood care to comment, cos I'm gonna keep pushing this thread to the top every time I come across a new configuration of metal sided draws.......

[Neville Bastian]

Now if there was a problem with dovetail joins it would have been addressed with build one.
We just drill the fronts with a manual jig. As most of our doors are mdf with a face pattern applied and can't be done on the Thermwood Ecabinets, we won't be able to use this feature anyway but would still like it for those melamine faced doors with abs edge.
Keep on nudging this topic Jason.
Regards Neville

[barry gill]

we have purchased a thermwood cnc flatbed router and recently spent $70k upgrading to the latest control system etc.

we manufacture benchtops predominantly (on a point to point) but intend to use our thermwood specifically to supply cut to size parts for cabinet makers.

whilst we are just embarking on this journey, i have spoken to a number of my prospectave customers and have found that they are using several differnt metal sided drawer systems as follows:
hettich innotech
hettich multitech
blum tandembox
blum metabox
harn impaz
grass novapro

many of these drawer systems come with a few optional types of actual runnser (slides as the american call them) many of which will have a different drilling pattern,.

the relationship between the centrline of the runner holes into the cabinet and the drawer front clip holes (in the back of the drawer front) and the distance to the bottom of the drawer front is critical and beyond the limitation of my memeroy. i tried to add the front holes the same as the hingge hols like sean did and had the same result.

my customers also use a variety of cabinet depths and heights, and drawer combination configerations. this means that there are hunderds if not thousands of combinations

this means that i have to waste 1/2 hour of my time for every drawrr cabinet a customer orders, looking up the details of the drawer system, and runner selection, then manually adding drawer front holes (sometimes adding a contraint if i think it might be used again.

so far, with my limited use of ecabinets this seems to be the most clumsy part of the program and extraordinaly time consuming

can, or will thermwood fix this? surely, any one with a thermwood router using ecabinets would want this to be fixed?

barry

[Sean Jakob]

Neville
I have read some of your other posts and realise that you have a Thermwood CNC so that must be really annoying to have to drill them manually??

What about you Jason, how do you deal with this?

Sean

[Neville Bastian]

Hi Sean and others,
Yes it is frustrating. It could be worse as one other Ecabinet user said having come away from the "Blame Game" That's the game where the software and the hardware blame each other for something not working.
I think the downside or as you say frustrating thing is having something half done like the metal sides which are the future now in most of the world. This drilling should be enhanced for people who do subcontract work and need to switch parameters hourly . In my case the drilling of the drawer fronts needs to be done 100% of the time with staff or not at all. With no mdf door code coming through Ecabinets the face 6 can't happen for me I also can't take advantage of offcut optimising.

My long term frustration of the Thermwood that can make carving and barley twists etc that blow you away yet won't improve on their door program for doing MDF doors. I have criticised the 5 part door program and have been told it is being used. I thought hardly anyone would use dovetail drawers but I was corrected on that also. My thoughts maybe the MDF doors users may out strip it in popularity when you use world wide figures. I think other markets would look how many things the Thermwood could do to justify the monthly repayments. I am fairly sure that an Australian salesman saying you can save money making your own timber doors and dovetail drawers would not sway them towards the Thermwood. Ecabinets swayed me but maybe it wouldn't have if my staff had been trained in a different cad program and I had spent 70K on it.

I think if Thermwood wants to sell ship loads of Thermwoods to the rest of the world and also be where the future is heading in the US they need to look how a potential purchaser would choose a Thermwood over a German CNC which are held in good stead down under. Firstly Ecabinets is a big plus. This gets rid of the BLAME GAME.
The other area is obtaining external orders through the free Ecabinets. This hasn't worked for me because the learning curve is too difficult for most cabinet makers or carpenters even though it has been improved.
Maybe a web site owned by Thermwood where people design a Ikea type kitchen then they work out a cost based on their proximity to the Thermwood owner who wishes to participate.Thermwood takes a cut for running it.
Maybe enhancing the batch input to make it easier for those doing other cabinetmakers work to change things quickly.
Sorry Sean for rambling on. I'll be accused of Thermwood bashing which is not my intent.
Regards Neville

[Rick Deskins]

My long term frustration of the Thermwood that can make carving and barley twists etc that blow you away yet won't improve on their door program for doing MDF doors.

Can you not make a slab door/drawer of mdf material and take it to the part editor and do what you want with it?

[Kerry Fullington]

Rick,

I have been looking at this and I thought you should be able to place holes in the part editor and constrain them and everything would be OK. The problem I think comes from the multiple reveals that one uses in frameless. You might have one reveal on the right side of a drawer and another on the left. There are also changes in top and bottom reveals so any constrained holes set for one reveal will not work when the reveal is changed. The holes in the drawer front need to be positioned by the drawer box and slide. This would require eCabinets to create a hole pattern in two different axis planes.

Sorry Rick,

I just noticed you were addressing the MDF Door question and not the metal drawer hole pattern question. I think Neville is wanting the features of PanelMetrix in eCabinets for full fledged MDF door production.

Everyone will correct me if I am wrong.

Kerry

[Kerry Fullington]

Am I correct in assuming that the Hardware Hole editor would need to become a full 3D editor instead of just 2D to be able to accomplish what Sean is wanting to do.

Kerry

[Forrest Chapman]

Kerry and Others,

What we are asking for in mdf doors is the ability to stack tools or create tool sets. The feature is already available to add 1 single tool and visibly see it. If you could add multiple tools in this area and then have the controller recognize them with whatever settings you place like tool direction and speed then you have a fully functioning mdf door program.

Forrest

[Rick Deskins]

Am I correct in assuming that the Hardware Hole editor would need to become a full 3D editor instead of just 2D to be able to accomplish what Sean is wanting to do.

3D view not required. This could be done with the 2D view. The main thing that will have to be decided is where to position the drawer front holepatterns (patterns on the -X side of the axis) from: the drawer front, the drawer box, the side of the cabinet? What if there is no drawer box with the drawer front but it does have a slide pattern?