1: How to orient my piece once the 1st side has been cut (The pockets and contours with tabs) so that I can line up the 2nd cut to match the 1st once the board is flipped.
How to set up the tabs so I can do the 3d adaptive clearing and parallel cuts on the second side without cutting the tabs left from the previous setup. (I suppose I could cut this side first then flip the piece but then I wouldn’t have anywhere to add tabs on the other side).
As you can tell, I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around this. Any help is appreciated.
I have not done 2-sided milling but I hope to try it some day.
The traditional method is to have some fixturing like pins or a vise and to mount the workpiece on those, and then flip, but unless the pins are precisely aligned with the machine, it would have a small error. There is also the question of the precision of the thickness of the workpiece if it is sitting on opposite faces.
What I would like to try is a ‘self-aligning’ fixture (not sure what it’s called) where you mill fixturing features into the top of one side of the workpiece and in the surrounding waste part. Then by flipping, the features in the workpiece fit into the features in the surrounding part and it is automatically aligned with the machine and sets the correct depth. This should produce minimal artifact around the edges.
I went looking and it took me a while to find something similar. Look for “self-aligning jig”. https://youtu.be/BLD4dFoXC7o
This is similar to what I wanted but I want to try something that is constrained in Z as well, so it doesn’t depend on the stock thickness being precise.