It isn't what a purist would call a "true dovetail," but then neither is the joint cut with a router.
What we did is integrate the joint into eCabinet Systems software so programming is automatic." It has been around but it has always been difficult to program, so it wasn't used much. "To be honest we didn't invent this joint. Here is a quote from the article that the picture above came from. To be fair to Thermwood, they are not marketing the joint as their own invention. Without providing a drawing, there's basically a small radius at the acute angles of the joint. The joint Thermwood is promoting (and the one James ran prior to them) is not a true dovetail, but very close. James Eichling ran the same joint on a Komo about 2 years ago. It is interesting to see Thermwood and E-cabinets market this dovetail as their own invention. Three weeks ago we installed a Northtech single automatic, which makes one drawer in 48 seconds. The Dodds single machine dovetailer will make you 30 to 40 drawers a day (one person). You can adjust the size of the tails to get the look you are after. All you have to do is snap the pieces together. I was at Thermwood when they ran a first nest of drawers. I think that there are several guys nesting drawers now. Does one use 4 x 8 sheets of plywood, MDF, alder wonderboard? I too am interested in hearing from anyone who has actually produced these drawers. When I inspected the Thermwood promotional photo of the dovetail nest, in my opinion, it appears that the joint created is a pseudo dovetail and in actuality probably more correctly called an interlocking joint with some dovetail characteristics. I believe what contributor N is trying to say is that a true dovetail joint is not possible in a flatbed nested CNC format. The real dovetail joint is cut with a specific angle to self-lock the joint. To cut the real blind dovetail, one wood must be placed horizontal, and the other vertical. Horizontal table CNCs do not cut dovetails. Komo is also advertising a dovetail macro in their latest Router Cim release. And yes, I would like to see an example picture/video, etc.
What I am after is a description of what cutters are used to make these dovetails. I have a copy of the Ecabinet software but have been too busy to learn it.
Does anyone have pictures or additional information? But I am very curious how Thermwood has accomplished this. A simple program can be created using Excel to write the code. This can be done on any 3 axis machine using inexpensive tooling. While it might not be considered a true dovetail, once the boxes are assembled, you cannot tell any difference and the strength is sufficient. Without using an aggregate I have created a solution that works rather well. I am also interested in creating nested dovetail drawer parts without additional machining. It writes only to a Thermwood machine and I haven't heard of another that does this.
The methodology and code is encrypted so the user can not see and/or copy it.
The design allows full flexibility and writes the files to the controller for us. What you have seen is a new feature in Ecabinet software. Anyone care to share how this is accomplished? I have been reading recently about cutting dovetails for drawers using a CNC router.