Creating a Para­met­ric Template for Hidden Finger Joints

When our col­league Heinrich is not sup­port­ing our cus­tomers or working on R&D projects, he likes to spend his free time making things. So when he encoun­ters a chal­lenge that might benefit from a con­ve­nient para­met­ric approach, CAESES is an obvious choice. Just like this time, when he set out to create a bunch of wooden drawers.

Here is Hein­rich’s expla­na­tion of his approach:

“I wanted to be able to quickly man­u­fac­ture wooden boxes and drawers in various sizes. Typ­i­cally, with a CNC mill, this requires to manually remove addi­tional material from the corners since the milling tool can’t get all the way into sharp corners. A hidden finger joint allows to hide this short­com­ing from the eye, while still making for a very strong joint with lots of cross-grain surface area for glue-up. The hidden geometry features are sur­pris­ingly complex — espe­cially when aiming for variable box sizes and dif­fer­ent stock thick­nesses. While they might not be visible, the right number and sizing of fingers is very impor­tant to ensure a strong joint. At the same time, clear­ances need to be fine-tuned to ensure just the right gap sizes for a good glue-coverage. Exactly what a para­met­ric model could provide. So using CAESES was a no-brainer.”

Ques­tions

Please do not hesitate to get in touch with us if you have ques­tions in the context of your specific appli­ca­tion. We look forward to dis­cussing it together with you!