I have tried making a box and adding a lid using plywood. The amount of material left for the top of the groove is very small and has chipped out during the carve. It would be nice to have the option to move the groove further down to avoid this. On my last attempt which seemed to work was to change the height of the groove for the slide, and using a smaller thickness to carve the lid. Meaning the box was made with .5 inch plywood, changed the groove to .3 instead of the .6 the app returned and then carved the top out of .25 plywood.
I would just point out that plywood is not the best option if you have small/thin features. Due to the lamination of the veneers and possible voids internal to the plywood, you never really know how it will hold up in those situations.
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Brandon Parker
I, too am running into this issue.
Would regular wood work any better? I want to get that same look, but that top little piece is just too thin. Maybe If I could find some pvc with wood pattern on it I could try that out.
Solid wood will typically hold together better but stay away from wood with a large grain structure like Red Oak. Red Oak chips pretty easily due to the large porous structures within the grain. PVC would work really well with the right feeds/speeds and you can definitely get it with wood grain. You will definitely be paying a premium for the PVC (I supposed even regular wood as well these days…).
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Brandon Parker
I make the slide top boxes from ply all the time. What I do is make the slot a bit narrower, as I find the app makes it too wide. I then move the slot down a smidge, which will give you a thicker top. Then I run super glue along the ridge to give it extra strength.