Cutter

Craftysims

Cutter alignment

The view in the profile window is the end of the work piece with the router table bed as the bottom horizontal of the graphic and the fence as the right hand vertical of the graphic. It is assumed that the work piece is to be fed away from the viewer. If this makes no sense then do the following. Set up a piece of stock ready to be fed into your router table. The view looking at the end of the work piece furthest from the cutter should be the one in the profile view.

There are two ways to align the cutter.

Left click in the profile view window, hold the mouse button down and drag the mouse around. This will give very rough alignment of the cutter/fence.
Use the Fence position and Height sliders to give very fine control over the cutter/fence alignment.

Fence position
A fence position of 0 indicates that the fence is directly over the center of the cutter.
When fence position is negative the fence is towards the work piece, exposing less of the cutter.
When fence position is positive the fence is away from the work piece, exposing more of the cutter.

Cutter Height
A Cutter Height of 0 indicates that the cutter base (cutter edge towards the router) is aligned with the router table.
When Cutter Height is negative this is the distance of the cutter base below the table.
When Cutter Height is positive this is the distance of the cutter base above the table.

The Inter-lock fence and height feature can be very useful. It will limit the movement of the cutter bit and fence to 'normal' positions. Also if the cutter is fitted with a bearing it will limit the fence position to the bearing edge.

The cutter and fence positions are shown above the sliders and at the bottom left of the main screen. When your happy with the position hit Cut. There will be a delay of a few seconds as the cut is analysed and the new profile created.

Now you can start on the second cut. Select another cutter, rotate or flip the work piece and get cutting. Build up complex cuts and view them in your cutting list. You can even re-order the cuts and remove cuts from the cut list in the tools panel. This allows you to avoid unsafe cut sequences when the work piece could rock due to lack of support.

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