Akeda responds...I got this e-mail from them:
To "Never Enough Money":
I saw Toller's question about half blinds on rec.woodworking. I tried emailing him, but there's no yahoo account by that name.
I'll try to explain the differences between fixed and variable spacing jigs:
All template jigs cut pins and tails in a single pass. The reason this is possible is because the pin piece is mounted offset behind the tail piece, and the jig forms a rows of equal sized pins, tails, pin sockets and tail sockets. Therefore, template jigs are faster at half blinds than infinitely variable jigs.
You can't cut pins and tails at the same time on a jig with variable spacing, because the joint halves would never match up. For that reason, half blinds made on a variable guide finger jig take more time than on template jigs because you have to reposition the guide fingers.
But . . . we considered just that issue when we designed the variable pitch AKEDA jig. Because the AKEDA is in one sense a "digital" machine (the guide fingers are positioned incrementally) you can make a variable layout of pins at one end of the jig, and a perfectly identical layout of tails at the opposite end. That means you can cut the pins and then go on to cut the tails without stopping, and the pin piece will always fit the tail piece with absolute accuracy. There's only one limitation of course, the work piece widths must be less than half the width capacity of the jig.
Although you'll always have have the same amount of material to remove, when this "fast method" is combined with all the other user friendly features of the jig (such as rabbeted drawer fronts not needing any special treatment), the AKEDA is faster than a template jig and way faster than infinitely variable jigs.
There's a reference to the AKEDA "fast method" for half blinds here:
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free to post this on rec.wooworking, and if you have any other questions, just ask !
Kevan