Can I make a groove?

Community Support
21

That was the original topic, but it looks like community wisdom is that it isn’t worth wasting the laser time to do it.

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you wont know til you try it! maybe @Kusmeroglu can try it out for us :wink:

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23

I had $100 worth of Menards gift cents from Christmas. Had the 15% off paper bag to fill. Got a filled the bag with clamps of all sorts and lengths. Four 12" lightweight. Nothing beats the 3/4" pipe clamps tough, although the screw handle isn’t always easy helpful in positioning. The other day I had all 26 clamps that I own tied up in gluing the bandsaw wheels together. Can’t have enough clamps.

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And back to the original topic: my kitchen match box holder might end up with some rabbets cut in them. So it will be one of the first things I try.

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I’ll add it to the hopper. :wink: Is acrylic ok, or would you prefer wood? I don’t know much about how to attach wood together in a nice box… maybe I can get @madebynick to help me figure something out.

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So i stayed up coding all night last night and havent slept, and thought oh man, she might cut some stuff for us. Then I thought oooh, I wonder if I sent her things, if she would engrave them, then id have some awesome engraved stuff. Then I remembered Im getting a laser cutter. Im going to bed lol

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27

Haha… get some sleep!

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28

@takitus @Kusmeroglu

I had been specifically thinking about a groove box all day long that I want to make in acrylic. If you can wait til saturday night i will have a file made for the groove box.

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Groovy!

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30

Can’t we laser our own clamps ? :slight_smile:

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https://www.pinterest.com/pin/481463016393706911/

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32

I’ve made the groove box in inkscape. I have it in a an svg file. @Kusmeroglu, would you try it out on some quarter inch acrylic?

33

I’ve made boxes with sliding grooves before - there’s two options. The approach I used is to cut rails separately, then slot them in using tabs or shallow engravings so they’re the right distance apart. Both worked fine to make a really cool sliding puzzle box. (I bought the plans and they’re not a license that allows sharing, so I won’t post them here).

A different approach, and what I think you’re talking about, is to engrave the slot. THe depth will vary with the growth rings as @B_and_D_T says. You can engrave extra-deep but you’ll get a little slop. This may work for some approaches but won’t be as precise as the first one.

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34

Mini rabbet plane is in the hopper! And this thread needs music:

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35

don’t shake your Forge thing, shake your Forge thing yeah yeah (glass tube people) lol

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36

looks like you have a grip on things

37

Follow up here, I threw together a box last night to test this finally (forever later, sorry about the wait). I used acylic, and just modified a plan from http://boxmaker.connectionlab.org/ to something that had a groove and a flat edged top instead. @Sawa was super awesome and sent me some plans, but I realized that I wanted the box a specific size for some Heroes of the Aturi Cluster pieces that I made so I ginned up my own thing really quickly. Engrave groove works like a charm. In fact, the whole box has the perfect amount of kerf and fits together tightly enough that I don’t need to glue it, which really impressed me.

816×612 165 KB

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38

Thank you for that cool example! Nice!

39

Thanks for posting this and giving us a sense of the work flow.

I’ve been wondering about that, how they will all work out, especially as a rabbet (rebate in GB) that will take the edge of another piece for glueing.

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40

Great to know that it works! Thanks for showing us.

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