Advice on Dekton please

[samhanbury]

Hi guys

We have a had a request from a customer wanting a LED Groove on the underside of Dekton. 3mm deep 15mm wide.

My CNC is a Intermac Master 53, our CNC Saw is a GMM. we don't have any problems fabricating dekton usually but as we all know on here you cant plunge cut the stuff.

has anyone on here achieved this before? please see drawing for a better description.

Need advice on what tooling ETC to use

[carvednstone]

You would not be plung cutting it if you flipped the piece and ran your saw 3mm deep from one side of the top to the other?
Or you could just use what ever you rod with to cut a grove in the bottom side of the slab if you worried about too much tension with the saw while cutting.

[Dave.Scott]

I would cut the groove before I dropped the sink cutout because I'd worry that I would split the sink rail if the cutout was done first.
Also, position the sink cutout and the groove towards the center of the slab in an area were the tensions are lower.

[Omni Cubed Larry]

Hi Sam, welcome to the forum.

I am not a fabricator, and I have no practical experience with Dekton, so take this with a grain of salt.
This does not look like a good idea to me.

There is less than 3/8" left on the whole front edge. The sharp corners in the bottom of the groove will create high stress concentration points (this is a fact). As far as I know, Dekton doesn't play well with areas of high stress concentration.
Just like having sharp inside corners on a sink or cooktop cutout, the sharper the corner, the higher the stress concentration. That whole area in front of that sink cutout looks like it is just waiting to blow up to me.

It is almost like you would be scoring it (like they score glass or porcelain) so it will snap right there when someone leans on the front of the countertop.

High Stress Dekton.JPG (22.77KiB)Viewed 1879 times

[Omni Cubed Larry]

A safer option would be to put the LED strip under the cabinet in front of the toe kick. Still looks cool, but doesn't destroy the structural integrity of the very expensive countertop.

[Rick George]

I know this would change some of your detail and add labor but just giving another option if your worried about the stress points as Larry is describing.

IMG_0306.JPG (59.58KiB)Viewed 1869 times

[Dave.Scott]

I did not notice that you are using 12mm material, I assumed 2cm.
I would also not do it.
I like Rick George's solution.

[Alex_Bores]

I think the 12mm material makes this too risky. I also think that Rick has given you a viable solution as well.

I wouldn't do this with this material thickness.
2cm or 20mm would be ok.

Like Nick said you aren't plunge cutting this.

[GuyboR]

I'm with Larry on this. Too risky to groove the material.

And as a whole, I'm not a Dekton fan yet. We did the "training". Epic fail. We were not able to core a hole or fingerbit any outside radii on our Northwood.

But we still decided to proceed and use our training material for my desk. Waterfall end. Mitered edge. 2cm on work side of desk. Once again....EPIC FAIL. Overhang was off a bit so I tried to "bump" it over a 1/4" with the palm of my hand. This is the result.

20170208_163038_resized.jpg (99.12KiB)Viewed 1837 times

This will be getting pulled out as soon as we decide what to use next.

[Kowboy]

I agree with Larry and like Rick's solution too. Maybe a nice 1/4" x 1/2" of color matched gloss solid surface siliconed to the bottom to hide the strip?

[Kowboy]

Has anyone tried rabbeting this stuff instead of mitering the edges?

[GuyboR]

Has anyone tried rabbeting this stuff instead of mitering the edges?
[

The pattern does not go all the way thru the material. So if you rabbit it, you will see a big line with no pattern.

Even with the miter, when you put the arras on the miter it created a white line.

[Dave.Scott]

We have been very successful in getting our feed/speed/tooling correct thus limiting the chipping so our arras is nearly unnoticeable. Depending on the color, I still believe that mitering is the best option.

Guy, did you glue in any backing behind the miter that you have pictured?

[GuyboR]

Guy, did you glue in any backing behind the miter that you have pictured?

No. Was I supposed to?

When I bumped it, I did it at the miter..top, not at the bottom of the drop

[samhanbury]

Thanks for the replies on this personally i agree its too risky in 12mm, however our customer has been in contact with consentino and they have been advised that it is achievable with a small milling wheel that fits in the gearbox of drainer groove wheels.

will let you all know how we get on

[Kowboy]

Thanks for the replies on this personally i agree its too risky in 12mm, however our customer has been in contact with consentino and they have been advised that it is achievable with a small milling wheel that fits in the gearbox of drainer groove wheels.

will let you all know how we get on
[

Sam:

When this top fails, your customer isn't going to blame Consentino, they're going to blame you, I don't care who signed what in writing. I'm not enthused about a customer who would do an end run around their fabricator either.

[Kowboy]

[

The pattern does not go all the way thru the material. So if you rabbit it, you will see a big line with no pattern.

Even with the miter, when you put the arras on the miter it created a white line.
[

Guy, that depends on the depth of the rabbet. Can you mill this stuff to leave it 1/16" thick? You've got to have an arris with either, but with a rabbet the joint is facing out, not up at your eye and is much easier to clamp. And no razor sharp delicate edge to worry about either.

[Dan R.]

Achievable at what cost?

[GuyboR]

Guy, that depends on the depth of the rabbet. Can you mill this stuff to leave it 1/16" thick?

I wouldn't try it on a real job.

[Dave.Scott]

Guy, I do not think that Cosentino specifies glue in blocking behind miters, it is just something that we have done with all miter countertop edges. We build up the countertop with stone and glue it in behind the edge as well

Kowboy, The pattern on Dekton is only 1/32 deep into the surface, rabbiting to maintain pattern from top th the drop edge would be almost impossible.

[Andrew H]

I would also say no. I don't care what the people who produce the material have said, are they doing it? The only way I'd try it is to have them send an extra slab for free when it does break.

I would also agree up above that the only real way to do this is to miter the edge and just tuck it behind.

[samhanbury]

Been Doing some trials on a scrap piece of 12mm this morning,

[Omni Cubed Larry]

It looks pretty good. Does it seem strong when you lean some weight on it? Be careful not to get hurt.

From an engineering standpoint... If you can grind your finger bit with at least a small radius on the end, it will greatly reduce the stress concentration at the corners. And if you could even polish those tiny corners a little, that would really help too.

[samhanbury]

it seems really strong for what i was expecting, tried everything to get it to snap under normal conditions and it stayed strong, i wouldn't want to chance going any deeper than 3mm deep though.

however the job requires a cut out which could change everything, i will be doing a cut out later on this peice this week time permitting.