Cutting long pieces

[randyf1965]

How can you cut pieces longer than your longest axis? I have need to cut pieces to replace my X-axis (currently 54") and the longest piece I will need to cut is ~65". Some of the pieces will be too big to clear the gantry to cut on both sides.

I was thinking adding several small hole along the length evenly spaced then using pin use these to aligh the piece after I cut as far as I can.

Or I was thining of just cutting them in 2 pieces at differnt points and doing a half lap joint. But worried that will have issues with strength.

Sounds doable but if someone has a better way of doing it.

[vid1900]

If you are ripping wood, use the pannel saw at home repo (they usually say they wont do precision cuts, but they do all the time). If they give you crap, rip it long then cut it to size on your mach.

vid

[ger21]

I was thinking adding several small hole along the length evenly spaced then using pin use these to aligh the piece after I cut as far as I can.

Or I was thining of just cutting them in 2 pieces at differnt points and doing a half lap joint. But worried that will have issues with strength.

Either way should work fine. Instead of a half lap, you can make it a larger, multiple stepped lap joint, which should make it stronger.

[randyf1965]

Only issue with a several step joint is the parts are 1/4"plywood (actually .2")

[spalm]

Hey Randy,

The indexing solution would work, IF you can chop your Gcode into pieces.

The only way I know to join long skinny pieces of thin ply is to use a scarf joint. Not sure if you want to go there. Canoe builders use this joint to get 15 foot lengths out of 8 foot boards.

How about cutting it as two pieces and then use them as a template with a pattern bit outside of the CNC machine to cut the real pieces? (It seems like I am pushing pattern bits a lot these days, but they are really cool.)

Keep us informed on how you solve this,
Steve