SFA

Think I know the answer but figured I'd ask to be sure.

Is there a way to use the seam phantom on a french miter seam? Most of our seams are french mitered. Our seams are generally good, but I strive for great. There are plenty of guys who rave about the seam phantom and I'd like to get one, but it doesn't make sense unless it can do all of our seams.

I think it depends how much more time you want to spend on it. You can certainly benefit from the SP on the positive side of the seam. But doing it on the negative would create more issues than it might be worth. Since that angle is so critical to a tight seam, with the French, you'd have to do a lot of extra work to use it on the negative as well. MIGHT be worth it. But might not. Like i said, time is the downside.

Why wouldn't you use the SP for the long straight portion of every seam?
Wouldn't making the majority of the seam be an improvement?
Maybe better is a more realistic goal than perfect.

Not sure how you apply it to the curve portion of french miter.

Why is the metric "to use on every seam'? We have several machines in the shop that are not used on every job. And they are a lot more expensive than a SP.

A SP would yield better than generally good seams, imo. Even on a french miter.

You could use it for the straight parts and touch up the miters by hand. Dry fit in the shop and adjust as needed. Would improve your seams a lot.

Don't you have three intermacs? You can do a way better Euro miter seam on the cnc than you can with the seam phantom touching up the curves by hand. We use terminator vac brazed clean up bits, two positions, and our straight seams are as good as they were with the seam phantom. Out of curiosity, why do you run mostly euro seams if you profile on cnc's?

We do run a seam kit on the CNC machines.

We do euro seam to save material in most cases. It's one of those "we've always done it that way" situations, so I don't rock the boat too much. Our customers also like the euro seam to eliminate the 3" inside radius corners; I don't see a need to switch.

Our seams are good, but not SP good. Just seeing if there was a way to incorporate a SP into our shop to get things a little better. Always looking for ways to improve.

What seam tools do you use? I think vac brazed is the only way to go for seams, any slight loss of shape on standard sintered diamonds will be doubly compounded on a seam.

We run 2 vac brazed wheels. The first we run around scribe and seams; the second is just for seams. When the first one wears out, we put the second into position 1 and the new one in position 2.

We use the seam phantom on all our seams including french miters.

How do you do the radius parts of the french miter to ensure you're not taking off too much material?

We don't use a radius with the seam phantom, instead of a radius it goes into a sharp corner.

you have to use 3 positions for cnc seam wheels like alex said. it will come out better than seam phantom. also we have been running out z wheels for months and they still run very very well. you have to be nice on the amount of material your taking off. our number 3 wheel barely hits.

We use #1 for around everything, #2 for walls and seams, #3 for seams.

We also used a 33 intermac and now a 38.3 and a northwood. Both come out great no shop time