Reducing Cut time --

[gsrice]

I am try to create a 1 piece jewelry box drawer -- the completed piece is roughly 12 * 12" - and 1 1/2" * 1 1/2" * 7/8" squares within - 1/4" wide dividers - thought it should cool --

Well the cut time came out to be 9 1/2 hours in normal mode and 7 hours in draft -- anybody got any ideas on how to reduce the cutting time on this minimal monster ?

Thanks

Greg

[Icutone2]

Raising the carve region saves time for me. But I dought that is what you want to do. Only way I know of to speed things up.

[DrBob]

Hi Greg
I use the larger the tool the more removal method as a machinist so i upsize the best i can with the cutters i got.
Bob

[HighTechOkie]

You are asking the machine to carve out a bunch of material with a small bit. No way to get around that if you want it to be one solid piece. Even using a 1/4" bit would only reduce the time by about 1hr.

The faster method is to make the dividers separately. If you have a table saw, this will only take about 10-15min. If you want to do it all on the CW, it will take between 45min - 1.5hrs depending on which method you use.

I have two layouts. The top portion would be using a 7/8" thick piece of wood to cut dado's 7/16" deep and cutting out 12 strips. 6 would be horizontal with the dado up, and the other 6 would be vertical with the dado down to interlock with the horizontal slats. This will take about 45min for the CW to cutout, but you risk the slats coming loose during carving. You would need to clean up my layout and add tabs or cut them free by hand.

The bottom layout would cut 12 slats out of 1/4" material in 1.5hrs, but the corners of the dado's will be rounded and have a gap between them.

Both layouts are for example purposes and not precise for your design.

Rob

[Amonaug]

This one is 10 3/4" x 10 3/4" and takes 5 hours, maybe you can use the idea

[gsrice]

I appreciate all your input -- it will help -

Attached is my attempt at a one piecer --

[Dan-Woodman]

Greg
Cutting this all out of one piece of wood you will have problems with the dividers being so thin going across the grain. They would be very week. They might even break while cutting.
Another possiblity would be to cutout a templete for you handheld router to follow. you might have do it in two pieces cutting every other square with each templete.
later Daniel