Wednesday 3 April 2013

mock up of front and back door to base


I went to bunnings to buy a 2400mm * 1200mm 16mm thick particle board to make the test parts for the cabinet.

The test pieces consist of the front door flap, the back door the base. What I'm trying to achieve here is getting the right magnetic field and pressures right between the folding door flap and the connection to the door flap and back door.

I need to see whether I need to take magnets out or make more magnet housings to create more magnetic pressure.

This jig is only rough and is only needed to see if the magnets are doing to work. Some of the connection process with hinges and etc will be different to the real thing in this test.

With the process of this piece before hitting the real thing there will be a series of tests to see if things are going to work properly.


Try to get some one to help you when lifting sheets like this. Sadly I had no one to help me that day. There are ways in which you can lift the sheet up your self but you need to make sure you do it properly so you don't hurt your back.

The router/ saw table came in handy for cutting the sheet down for the parts.


This also works better if you have someone else to help you, again sadly didn't have any one to help. What this is is a built up plat form that will hold the cut piece to prevent it falling on the ground. You will find that if you don't have support to catch the weight of the piece the end of the exit cut can cause unnecessary chipping/ break out.



The sheet is far to wide to try and make the cut in one go with the circular saw. So I had to stop the circular saw about 3/4 in to the job and come around to the other side to finish the cut, but operating the saw backwards. Which was a bit cumbersome but achievable. Cant afford to move the fence again to reposition it to finish off the cut. This is because it takes longer in setup but also your not guaranteed that your doing to meet up with the original beginning cut.


Had to use a few pieces of timber and plywood scraps to act as packers to get to the right height. Work horses would be good in this process but I don't have any.


Cut the panel down to the width sizes of the front door flap and the back door. Marked them off the attached the part layout drawing with it.


Cut the rough bass section. Will size all further down on the multi combination machine on the sliding bench saw.


Cutting the parts down to the next roughing stage on the table saw on the multi combination machine.


Used the actual birch plywood parts for final piece as a template to mark out on the particle board parts. My band saw has not come in yet and my scroll saw is out of action. So I just used the old jig saw that I had in one of the cabinets in the work shop. The cut for this didn't have to be super accurate since it was just being used as a roughing cutter to remove the waste off cut sections from the parts.


The friction mats on the cutting station helped out heaps when using the jig saw didn't need to clamp down the parts to the table top.



Parts have the off cut sections taken away. The 20mm veneer offset is still left on them which I will be removing with the circular saw but set to the 25 deg angel.


I didn't want to take off the whole 20mm offset as I wanted to add the 7mm offset into the parts to accommodate for the timber edging. I marked out the finished size of the door including the timber edging measurements.


I needed to zero my angel gauge again to make sure that the saw was cutting at exactly 25 deg.



The cut was out by .1mm so I was quite happy with that. I have not used the angel saw set up on the festool circular saw yet so I though this would be good practice before I did it on the real thing.



For cutting angles the festool circular saw is quite accurate and very easy to set up.


Cutting the 25 deg angels on the parts.



Cutting down the front door flap on its fold line. Had to make sure that I left enough to add on later to the bottom section of the door due to the 3mm saw blade thickness.


One thing to remember when coming to the real thing. The veneered panels for the front door flaps will need to but cut down the fold line first before the edging is added. You don't want the edging to line up like this as it will stick out like a sore thumb. This will be highly noticeable since the edging for the out side will be blond to a dark veneered section.


Door flap with 25 deg angels made and cut down on fold line.


Finishing off the cutting for the back door. The only straight cut on the doors is the bottom section.


I didn't want to make a whole side since I didn't have enough material and for the purpose of the exercise it wasn't really needed. I really only needed the edge section so this part was just acting as the front part of the side.

The part needed to be 712mm long.


On the bass I marked out the sections where the doors were going to sit also the angeled section of the sides.


The front edge of the sides is at an angle of 18 deg. So I decided to cut this on the table saw on the multi combination machine. The magnetic angel gauge is so handle especially in these circumstances. to check if you have the right angel you can either check on either side.

This side 90 deg - 18 deg will be 72 deg.

The other side 90 deg + 18 deg will be 108 deg.



The only thing with the sides which I will have to further think about whether I'll need to make a jib for it at some later stage. The front edge is at 18 deg which can easily be cut on the saw. Its the top slopped angle above it which is cut at 25 deg. Now this 25 deg angle is very shallow.


Had to thickness down a laminated beam from scrap in the work shop to 65mm. It had to be 65mm as the max height of the blade at a 25 deg on the saw is 75mm. I was attempting to make a starting point in making a jig. But there still needs to be a little more though put into this. I didn't get there but I think I'm pretty close. I'll come back to this at some later stage. 

You would normally have more of the blade exposed to have the ability to remove more of the waste and so it also does not create heaps of strain on the blade. But I wanted to keep as much width on the angled face as possible to create more surface area for the part to sit on making it more stable. 




Attaching the brackets to the base to connect the side section to.



Side section attached to base. This just needs to be quick assembly heaps of time doesnt really need to be spent on it.



Transferring the magnet housings to the back door from the transfer tracing paper.



Magnet housings marked out and ready to be bored. Now the housings are only going to be 7mm deep since I wont be placing the dowel plugs into them.


Transferring the magnet housings onto the front door flap.



Magnet housings transfered and ready to be bored.


I dont have a drill press or a good set of Fostner drill bits like at tafe so I just used a 16mm wide spade drill bit and hand drilled them with the cordless drill. I just placed asking tape on it to act as a guide where I needed to stop drilling to obtain the correct depth.


Magnet housings made.


Magnets placed in front door flap.



I decided to mask off the magnets to avoid them coming out with masking tape. Although this did work at all the magnets were way too strong and ripped off the masking tape.


I decided to use duct tape instead. It worked better but there was still the problem of the magnets wanting to break through it.

If I was to do a proper test I could glue them in. But this would mean that I would be wasting roughly around 60 dollars just to see whether it may work or not work.

What I need to make sure is that the magnets are facing the right way up + and - to one another. I stuffed this up a view times in the test. I think I'll mark the faces of the magnets so I know which face to glue down when placing into the housing. Placing the negative mark on them and positive mark on them.

I think I'll also add these markings next to the magnet housing as well.



Drilled the magnet housings in the back door.




What I needed to see here was whether the door could support its self from the magnetic field from the magnets.


I wont be using this type of hinge.  I will be using the ZYSA hinges which one is in the below picture. These hinges are a lot stronger and are not as flimsy as these above ones. The weight of the hinge is supported inside the part not on the outside making it a lot stronger.

The magnets helled up really well. I believe they wont need any more added here or taken away for this fold section. They had enough strength to hold by its self but also not that strong where it was still easy to unfold.

The magnetic connection will be a lot stronger in the real thing as the gapping will be thiner. It will be 2.5mm currently it is at 10mm. Plus also the duct tape and plywood bits wont be there. Normally when using these type of hinges you recess the hinge plate into the door. The hinge rebate is made on a slant. The top slant the same depth as the thickness as the hinge plate and the bottom rebate slant to the middle section of the hinge pin. The hinge rebate is also recessed in to the end of the hinge plate to the middle point of the hinge pin.

I didn't bother with this since I didn't want to spend heaps of time on this test and I thought It wasn't really needed since I wasn't actually going to use these specific hinges for the fold section on the front door flap.

One of the main reasons why I didn't use this type of hinge is because I didn't want the hinge pin protruding outside the door. I though this would make it look messy and interfere with the marquetry.



Attaching the front door flap to the base. Now also this connection wont be the same in the real thing. For the real thing ZYSA hinges will be used. Also the front door flap will be dropped lower. Around the front is a 16mm * 16mm deep rebate. This drops the door down so the back door can be opened and the drawers can also come out as well. I wanted a rebate also so the door flap could rest on it as well. Also there will be an extra 5mm added to this resting section from the bottom molding.



Looks messy but you get the idea. This little exercise showed me a few things that I need to add in before the veneer is laid and after in fit up stage.


I need to install another magnet housing to the connection of the front door flap to the back door. This will draw the front door flap closer to the back door. This will help a lot further down the track in case the door bows.


This gape would close up if another magnet housing was added in to the stop like I stated before. I also reckon in the same placement add one down near the bottom as well. This will further close up the gap. At the moment the only real connection is coming from the middle.


As a quick connection solution just added another bracket to the back of the back door connecting to the base.

I just added more tape to keep it in place. I Think a clip pin will need to be added to the top part of the doors to connect it the the cabinet more or magnet housings added into the top carcass plate rebate that rests up against the back part of the door. This is so it secures the door better to the cabinet but also draws it in more. This is encase over the years if the door becomes bowed. The magnet housing may work better since I don't think there is enough gaping to put in a clip pin from the back of the door the to drawer boxes.



Connection points from the L brackets.




This is where it the door flapped will be opened from. This test seemed to not show this off to well since more parts of the cabinet needed to be made to see how well this would work. More parts needed to be added to make the cabinet more stable to see how much pressure was needed to pull the door flaps down.



I believe a slip clip of some kind will needed to be added here so when folding down the door for the first fold section. The top section wont want to automatically want to fold down as well at the same time. Could make this clip into a decorative feature.

These tests I will test on this testing first to see if it improves before I make modifications to the real thing.

I didn't have some of the machines I needed at the time to make this test better. Machines will come into the picture later down the track when more accurate testings need to be made.


I had to do some more magnet housing placement testing. With the previous test I found that I needed to add more magnets for support.

Two more magnet housings needed to be placed on the top section of the the back door as the top section of the door flap.


The adding of more magnets to the top section will prevent the door from bowing over the years.



The magnets that needed to reference from the front door flap to the back door needed to be placed here. They needed to be placed from the front of the door flap not the back. Having them at the back would make them to close to the other magnets making it a little harder to open the doors up.

Still Needed to space the magnets out properly. 80mm was the spacing from the test I did a while ago.


Adding these magnets here as well really made a huge difference. Pulled the door in a lot more but still made it easy to open as well.


Another section that I needed to add more magnet housings to from the precious test was at the bottom of the back door and the bottom folding section of the front door flap. This section wasn't so much to hold the front door flap bottom more closely to the back door when not folded down. It was to provide more support when the first fold took place.


This is where the magnets for the bottom section of the front door flap had to be added. Although the actual magnet housings will be placed on the outer face.


And this is where the magnet housings needed to be added to the back doors.


Drawn sections of the magnet housings from the in side face of the bottom of the door flaps transfered to the outer face.


Housings made foe the magnets on the bottom outside face of the front door flap.



With a little more playing around with the doors. I decided that another housing had to be added here for more support for when the first fold section takes place with the front door flap.

With this piece I wanted it to act as a sculptural piece. I wanted it to have the ability to be left in different folding orientations. Reminding me of origami. Also This extra magnet housing would pull the door more in if it started to move over the years through the seasons.


Only one extra magnet housing needed to be added.  This is the fold bottom section at the top of the front door flap.


Magnet housing on the back door in reference to the the above placement of the magnet housing on the bottom fold section of door flap.


Pulled it a lot more which was good and also gave a lot more support.



Also found that another magnet housing needed to be added here for more support.



Only one magnet housing needed to be added here on the back door. The other one wasn't needed as there was already a cross over from one of the other magnets from the front door flap. This cross over magnet will preform to magnet holdings. This means that I will need to make sure the placement of the + and - are correct.



Shows that the extra magnet housing would be too close. The cross over magnet is about 5-10mm away from it. The magnetic field with this magnets is pretty good so the magnets don't have to be 100 percent in alignment to their partners.


Magnets taken out of housings from the test mock up.


Magnets placed with their partners and placed into bags in put into compartments. I was getting a bit tired of continuously pulling the magnets apart from one another.

Since adding in more magnet housings I will need to buy more magnets plus make more dowel plugs.

Before gluing the magnets into the housings I will need to place the - and + signs in the housings and make sure that all magnets are in the right placements. I cant get this wrong as a fix up will be too costly.

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