Learn about Milling: The "Inside Corner" Problem
Coming to a CNC mill from a laser cutter, it is easy to get tripped up by the physical size of the bit when making designs. Any time you want to cut out an inside angle, you need to keep in mind that you can't reach all the way into an inside angle with a rounded bit. This comes up frequently when making furniture or any type of joinery; this post was inspired by the awesome examples of CNC joinery from this Make magazine post. Let's dive into the problem with inside corners and illustrate strategies to fix it.
The problem obviously depends on the size of your bit (let's call the bit radius R). An easy way to reduce the impact of this problem without modifying your design is to simply use a smaller bit. A laser cutter suffers from this only slightly because the 'bit size' is a tiny beam of light!
Fixing the inside corner problem
You can modify your design to compensate for this problem. There are actually several ways to cover the red area shown above.
If you have…
The problem obviously depends on the size of your bit (let's call the bit radius R). An easy way to reduce the impact of this problem without modifying your design is to simply use a smaller bit. A laser cutter suffers from this only slightly because the 'bit size' is a tiny beam of light!
Fixing the inside corner problem
You can modify your design to compensate for this problem. There are actually several ways to cover the red area shown above.
If you have…
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