Communion cup holders from hardwood

[J.R. Hatcher]

This was one of my most recent jobs. It has 110 pcs. It is communion cup holders for mounting to the back of church pews. These were made from 5 pcs of 5/8" X 6" X 96" red oak. The holes are 1" in dia. and were cut with a 1/2" bit. The profiles were cut with a 1/4" bit. I used 60 screws to hold them down. Each part had 2 tabs. No screws were damaged during the cutting of this job :cool:. How many of you guys can hold your breath for 51 minutes :D.

[gmessler]

Nice job J.R.
Looks like a giant gameboard.:)
Why so many screws?

[domino11]

JR,
That last pic reminds me of a really large cribbage board. :) The job looks real good though. Are you staining them or is the customer finishing them?

[J.R. Hatcher]

Greg the tabs are attached to the 1/4" of wood left between the parts. My reasoning was if that don't move everything will be alright ......... it worked :).
Heath the customer took them just like they came off the router.

Thanks

[Gerald D]

JR, glad you found the time to take pics! Wonderful job!

You sure like living dangerously with those screw approaches :eek::D
(I would have done the screws in the larger scrap area - mirror the cup holders to face away from each other)

You are a very brave man to lay all 5 planks down with one file! :cool:
I would have chickened and done one plank at a time :o

[Kobus_Joubert]

Nice Job JR...just show you that if a man knows his tools he can risk it like that. By this time you know where and how the machine will cut, therefore putting in screws is no problem. What I do is lay out all the cut pieces on my cam. In the uncut portions I put small circles to drill holes for the screws. Fix the wood on the sides with a clamp or to. Tell the machine to DRILL those holes first. Screw it down, remove the clamps and cut the rest....the machine will never cut into the hold down screws.....no holding your breath for 51 minutes..:D

[Gerald D]

What would the big boys with alu topped vacuum tables have done for this job?
.
.
.
wouldn't have accepted it!

[kaartman]

JR....tip-top job, nice of you to share trick of the trade Kobus

[cncb]

Nice work JR!! They look great. You have solid brass ones let me tell you - you're playing with fire there cutting that close to screws. I agree with others I would have arranged these so that I could safely screw the blanks down even if that meant using more material. I try to screw down blanks and leave min. 1 inch extra over the toolpath to put my screws. Material is cheap, tooling isn't. Plus customers don't pay for broken/chipped router bits. However from someone who has cut through pan head screws before when not paying attention I can say after you do so you never want to get so close to them again. Again thanks for posting the work it looks great!

[joecnc2006]

The easy way to know where the screws are is to clamp material down then make a tool path for screw placement in the waste material which will be left over, run that tool path and place the screws then run the g-code file to cut out parts.

[J.R. Hatcher]

Thanks everyone.

Kobus and Joe I use "Sheet Cam" and this was 1 job file with 3 processes, 1 for the cup holes, 1 for the screw holes, 1 for the profile. Since sheet cam will allow turning on or off processes I did saved it as 2 cam files, the first file to drill the screw holes only with the other 2 processes turned off, the second file to cut everything else with screw hole process turned off. I clamped down the boards by the ends, then drilled the holes (file 1) and inserted the screws, removed the clamps and ran file 2. For most of the cutting I wasn't even looking at the machine. I was just being funny about holding my breath ;). Sooooo Kobus & Joe looks like great minds think alike :rolleyes:.

When you have a machine that cuts within a few thousands of an inch whats the difference in missing a screw .005" or 5" :D

[Kobus_Joubert]

hear hear !!!;) I can see you trust your machine to do exactely what you want...well trained...sit...down boy and the rest.

[Gerald D]

The reason that I want to try and avoid precision machine drilled holes is because the staff in the shop must execute this job in between others. So they would get an instruction to screw a plank to the table, anywhere parallel to z , with screws along the centerline at x= 1, 7, 13, ,20 inches etc (relative to start of plank). Planks to be pre-drilled during previous jobs. Then typically they would run only one file with one 3/8" cutter, for each plank. The files 0,0 would be at the corner of the plank. (They would get a rough sketch and markout with a tape measure).

JR's way is nice and methodical, but our staff ain't. :(

[J.R. Hatcher]

Gerald I am a 1 man shop :o and you are correct about staff, I would not trust anyone doing what I did until they have proven themselves many times over.

[cncb]

By the way JR have you played with carpet tape much? (the fiberglass reinforced stuff) Works really well for small parts like that has a very strong initial tack. I've had great success with it.

[J.R. Hatcher]

How do you use it, is it double sided or what?

[Kobus_Joubert]

I have used that thin double sided tape as well....works well but cleaning it afterwards is more work than removing a few screws...also on thin MDF is sticks so well you could break the part when you lift it off the table...my 2c worth.

[sailfl]

J R,

The carpet tape is double sided. So you just have to put it down. It is used to hold two pieces of carpet together.

[hennie]

Kobus,that tape works well I stick to it.