I need to cut a dado in a hunk of melamine veneered MDF. Trial cut using my dado set yielded a lot of chip out. Using a zero clearance insert. Any instruction, tips, hints, to eliminate the the chip out will be appreciated. TIA and Happy Holidays!!
Larry
Score it first... Tape the cut lines... Use a router...
You're choice, suggest you do some test cuts first whichever method you choose.
Use a router.
Make two cuts...cut #1 VERY shallow (1/16 or so), cut #2 to depth desired.
The right blade helps. There are some blades with teeth configured especially for veneers. Last time I cut double sided melamine, I had no chipping on either side.
Just to clarify.... The first cut never goes deeper than the depth of a tooth, right? This way, there can be no exiting of the tooth, therefore no pulling out on the veneer?
I apologize in advance for asking the obvious. Are the outside blades on your stack on the proper side of the stack? Reason I ask, I had an issue many moons ago where some simple dados in decent plywood were tearing out rather badly. I had the right outside blade on the left etc... That made allll the difference in the world.
On my Freud stack, the outside blades run just a RCH high relative to the chippers. They score melamine on PB rather nicely before going for the full depth. Keep in mind that the stack is very sharp. I only use
120 gram melamine, and that helps too. I get minimal chipping. On the cheaper melamine boards, use a router.Upon further reflection, I seem to recall that I have had bad luck with chipping melamine off MDF regardless of tool used. Long time ago.
r
Well, the tooth *does* exit else it wouldn't be cutting, would it? :)
All you want to do is just cut thru the melamine on the first pass so you'd need to experiment with the depth since blade teeth vary in size, I find about a 1/16" depth works well.
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