I’ve been working on cutting simple shaker-style cabinet doors out of MDF on my MK2. A friend of mine is interested in buying them, but I’m hitting a wall when it comes to the time it takes to cut the interior pockets. For instance, with an order of 10 doors at 39” x 14” (with a 2-inch offset from the edge), I can only fit 2 doors at a time, with each door taking around 35 minutes to cut.
I’m using a 1-inch surfacing bit from IDC with a pass depth of .125 inches and a total depth of cut of .25 inches. Running at the LongMill’s max feed rate of 157 inches/min and a 60% stepover, that cut alone takes about 20 minutes. When I factor in the 3-4 additional toolpaths and the time to change and re-zero my Z-axis, I’m ending up around 35-40 minutes per door.
I’ve experimented with other toolpath combinations, like the IDC 1/4 Beast roughing bit at max speed, but it still takes about 17 minutes to clear the center pocket. Plus, I have to do a finishing pass, so no time is saved there.
I’ve put in a lot of time researching and testing different setups to find the best tools, feeds, and speeds to work more efficiently. I’m starting to wonder if my MK2 with the standard Makita router is really the right setup for this type of work if I want to make it profitable.
If anyone has experience with this and can offer tips on speeding things up or just being honest about whether this machine can handle it, I’d really appreciate your input!
I’m confident that you have looked at getting the max out of your mk2 so the only thing I can see to reduce production time is nesting. Take out one large chunk and do it via another way.
When you’d make a jig and a chunky miller and mill out the time consuming pocket by hand. Those large pockets can be milled way faster than the mk2 can do them. Once you have two doors pocketed, you put them on the cnc and let it work on the remaining tootlpaths while you mill out the next two doors by hand.
A cnc can do a lot of machining, but it’s not always the best or fastest tool available.
I use mine to plain, because i have no plainer. A plainer could do the work in less than a minute, while the cnc takes at least 10 mins to complete the same task.
Look at the tasks you give your cnc and think what tool could do a quicker job or even better job.
@Tpoole1988 IMHO, the Long Mill Mk2 is the wrong machine for this type of production work. If you plan to go into business doing cabinet doors, you should look at getting a true production machine. Otherwise, accept the limitation and the time that it will take to do the jobs.
Thank you for the response, Eddie. I’ve been holding out hope but I think it’s time to face reality that my machine just isn’t built for this, but as you noted there are other ways to get this done.
Hi I have run this type of project and remodelling all my kitchen cupboards doors. The rough bit works great try cutting down the passes by one so you should be able to use just 3 passes and maybe increase your feed rate 157 seems a little bit conservative. I ran my rough bit at 200 and reduced it to three passes got my time down to 27 minutes, you have to play around with the numbers