Top and Bottom Rounding Over and Sanding on the CNC

Back-side machining (but not sanding) of complex shapes is practical on a CNC equipped with pods. October 15, 2009

Question
This may sound like a novice question, and it is. Having not used pods before, I am wondering: after cutting through a nested sheet, can the remainder of the sheet fall away and leave the positive at a greater elevation, ready for top and bottom routing and/or sanding? Where could I find such a sanding attachment? We cut lots of 3/4" Euro-ply in compound curve shapes that I would like to machine as much as possible on the CNC. We currently round over edges 1/8" on the table router and then sand. We leave the edges unfinished otherwise.

Forum Responses
(CNC Forum)
From contributor D:
We do this all the time on doors. We had a tool made specifically to roundover the top and bottom in one pass. Any tooling company could help you with this. As far as the sanding on a CNC, I've not heard many success stories. Perhaps someone here might change my mind, but for now it seems like a waste of time. If you can, program in a pause when the waste pieces drop off, that way you don't have to stare at the machine waiting to manually pause it and clear away the debris. You have to do this. Pieces can fall and jamb at weird angles between rails and then be hit and sent flying across the room, or jamb up in the machine's travel and seize a ballscrew, rip out wires, pnuematic lines, etc.