Cabinet with angled ends or tops

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Mark McCallum
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Location: Sydney Aust

Cabinet with angled ends or tops

Post by Mark McCallum »

Its been asked a few times if its possible to angle sides or tops of cabinets.
I have to do a cabinet for an under stair situation and came up with a method by using stretchers.
Stretchers are a wonderful tool and with a bit of practice you can do some amazing things.
The main thing to think about is to make the cabinet bigger than you need so that you can get your lengthy stretchers in.
And to set a phantom stretcher to the front of the cabinet so that you can add the angled end stretcher in between.
The phantom front stretcher should be negatively set to the outside of the cabinet and then you can add doors with hinge holes as per normal.
I will try and attache the units as an assembly to illustrate what I mean.
The smaller unit, I did first so its a bit messier. You can put doors on both of them, but on the smaller one, the doors float off the front because of the inset on the shelves and ends. (i left a door on the big one as an example but they are both going to be open shelves, Its wire framed for the screen shot)
The mid shelf on the big top unit has the CNC joinery joint, I left it on just to show what I mean, which probably would not machine, or might machine a slot( so I deleted the joint, who needs hassles?) and then added back in part editor screw holes.
I used a cad program to work out a lot of the angles and to create the dxfs for the backs.
You could part edit the angle joint cuts onto the parts for the profile modeller, but for this job I am only going to use the panel saw.
For those interested in time spent in ecabs, It took me about an hour and a half per unit, partly because I was thinking it through, but mainly thats just how long it takes, With practice I think I could cut it down by 20 to 40 minutes, but its not something that we are doing everyday.
Using this method it would be quite feasible to do angled tops to cabinets as well.
Any questions feel free to ask.
Attachments
Under stairs.esa
(4.17 MiB) Downloaded 453 times
Angled cabinet.JPG
Angled cabinet with phantom.JPG
Mark McCallum
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Posts: 529
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Location: Sydney Aust

Re: Cabinet with angled ends or tops

Post by Mark McCallum »

I should have mentioned in the post above, while you can add a vertical stretcher like a partition, as far as I can determine, you can only rotate it in one dimension, that being while looking at the front of the cabinet it behaves like a revolving door into a building.
The same situation with a partition like a shelf, it rotates in the wrong direction to achieve an angled end like in the cabinets above, where as what we need for this situation to angle the end, is to rotate it like a clock face as you look at it, thats why you have to put the phantom partition on the front.
Hope that makes sense.
Having said that there might be another way that I have missed to do it. :)
Mark McCallum
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Posts: 529
Joined: Thu, Jun 16 2005, 7:53PM
Location: Sydney Aust

Re: Cabinet with angled ends or tops

Post by Mark McCallum »

Here is another example of a angled cabinet.
Takes a bit of working out but if you need to do it, you can.
This cabinet is part of a different job which doesn't have doors but I put some on just to illustrate the possibilities
aaaa1 door 2.01.hsf
(2.86 MiB) Downloaded 477 times
Cab 1b.JPG
Cab 1.JPG
Leo Graywacz
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Re: Cabinet with angled ends or tops

Post by Leo Graywacz »

Well Mark,
That was a real adventure. Didn't really understand when you said to make a phantom stretcher until I played for a while and couldn't get it to get me a stretcher in the depth direction of the cabinet.

You need to make a stretcher opposite of the back and then refer to it and the back as your starting place for making the stretcher that will rotate in the correct orientation. My stretcher came out with the grain running back and forth instead of with the length of the board. But It's close enough for now.

Couple of things that I might have done differently than you that might speed things up a bit. I made the square cabinet box the correct dimensions of my final cabinet. I cut the top and the side down to what I needed for the angle. Then I measured between the end points of the top and side to get the length of the stretcher and put that into the stretcher width right at the beginning of the process.

After that it was just trying to determine the exact angle to make them meet. I didn't do it but I suppose if I did the drawing in my CAD program I could have grabbed the angle from there instead of guessing my way through it.

I had a horrible instance when I had finished the cabinet and pushed the wrong button and then pushed keep this cabinet - no and lost everything. About 1 1/2 hours down the tubes. But I was able to make the cabinet from scratch in about 20 minutes because I had already figured out most of the dimensions and angles I needed.

Thanks for the helping start. Not sure I would have thought about using stretchers and would have put it together part by part.
Attachments
Shoe Rack Cabinet.jpg
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Mark McCallum
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Posts: 529
Joined: Thu, Jun 16 2005, 7:53PM
Location: Sydney Aust

Re: Cabinet with angled ends or tops

Post by Mark McCallum »

Hi Leo
I'm glad that you found it useful. :)
That looks like a nice job.

Its been a while since I posted this, so details have gone a bit fuzzy.
I wish I had of written down the reason why I said to make it larger. :(
There would have been some sort of reason, valid or not, but I forget why.
Any way, it works. :)



To change the grain direction of the stretcher.
Green hatch the stretcher in the stretcher editor.
CTRL C or click on construction settings.
There is a slider to change the direction of the grain :beer:
Leo Graywacz
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Joined: Tue, Jan 16 2007, 7:56PM
Company Name: LRG WoodCrafting
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Re: Cabinet with angled ends or tops

Post by Leo Graywacz »

I'll see if I can get that grain to move around, just to do it as a challenge.
Dell Precision 7710
Intel Core i7-6820HQ @ 2.70GHz 16.00 GB RAM
NVIDIA Quadro M3000M
512 GB PCIe NVMe - M.2 SSD
Win 7 Pro 64-bit

http://lrgwood.com
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