Dovetail Joint!

Here it is!

Both materials are ProofGrade but the yellow is on the thicker side and I did not bother adjusting the dovetail for it so it’s not perfectly flush.

These are 1" x 1" square for reference.

Dovetail Joint

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hot digity, looks like that took a few runs to calibrate the taper ?

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Oh squeeeeeeeee! :heart_eyes:
(I will be doing these!)

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Yeah, I started off with settings i ended up with after testing some unknown pink acrylic, which had a bitmap engrave that went right to the bleeding edge of going completely through. I forgot that stuff is thinner than ProofGrade. So the second run was correcting for that. On the third run I removed the de-focusing to bring the joint back closer to actual dimension instead of a “softer” one, which snugged the joint and made it a little bit deeper as well.

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Dangit! You are blowing through the wish list and have hit the holy grail. Wowzer.

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All my likes for the day go to this. What is this place going to look like when a few thousand more get their :glowforge: ?

You, sir, are showing all kinds of promise.

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This is plain awesome! I’d love to see a tutorial on this.

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Nice job!

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Fantastic. I have been thinking of gradients for counter sinks, but for some reason, the back of my mind had removed dovetails from the list of possibilities because of the angles required. I am sure that each material would require some testing, but I love the concept and execution. Great work!

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Wow! That’s pretty awesome.

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Argh! You beat me to it!
One of my qualms about doing a bunch of boxes on a laser/cnc is that they look like they were cut out by a laser/cnc. Not a bad thing, just not the look I usually go for.

How long did it take to cut each side of the joint?

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I second what @cynd11 said … would love a tutorial. Waiting on Pro, trying to learn as much as we can. A little tutorial would really help a lot of people. (Know you’re super busy with all your testing!) Also, know that EVERYONE watches for your posts! :heart_eyes:

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Here’s the SVG file for this test so you can see how it’s set up. It’s actually very simple because one side of the joint (yellow) is just a cut pattern, and the other side (orange) has linear gradient bevels.

The width of the bevels/cuts in the dovetail should be equal to the thickness of the mating material for a flush finish, or not equal if you dont want a flush finish (might be cool with either protruding or recessed look, hmmm!). Some folks might want to adjust for the laser kerf to make a really snug joint, I did not bother with that for this test because of simplicity. Instead I drew lines that would line up perfectly and relied on the kerf to give the clearance to allow it to fit.

In the file, I added dotted lines as visual reference to show the parts of the two mating pieces that line up with each other.

Also, because the GFUI doesn’t read vector gradients yet, the gradients over the orange part’s cutting path are a bitmap. The vector gradients are off to the right side because I like to keep vector sources for easier updating.

This is only a 1" square so the whole job ran in a minute and a half. Still, I am impatient and feel the need to stand in front of the glowforge and rest my chin on the lid while watching it work. :smiley: 5 year olds got nothing on this 41yr old manchild.

Dovetail Joint.svg 2.zip (2.5 KB)

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Thank you for the specifics!
Mike, I knew you were going to shine with a personal laser at your disposal!
I imagine your Dad has had a few “well, look at that” moments. :sunglasses:

Yep, the elevation of my pull-out shelf for the 'forge is perfect level for a chin rest. You’d think I planned it that way.

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Thank you for sharing the how-to! I have a project that needed dovetail joints and I had resigned myself to not having them…never thought it would be possible on a laser!!!

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Woohoo! I’ve wanted to see that done on a Glowforge forever! So excited you made it work!

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Hahaha that’s funny! You’ve had access to a glowforge longer than I have. :slight_smile:

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NOW we’re TALKING!

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Super cool of you to share. You rock @mpipes.

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Thank You @rebecca!

These kinds of challenges fascinate me, I love doing them! Plus this is all good practice!

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