"What makes your Cantek sub par Karl?"
-The spindle runs really warm. I don't think the bearing setup is the best it could be. I've replaced the assembly once already. I've got the old one and I've been meaning to take it to a machinist and have him take it apart, and put a higher grade bearing in to see if that resolves that issue. An electro spindle will run cooler, handle the high rpm better, and do so with less run out.
-I think there needs to be some speed control on the plunge part of the cut. I think it's too fast.
-A cnc dovetailer can run a climb cut to limit tear out.
-You have only one option for pin spacing. A cnc that can be altered, and some other things can be done as well, like doubling up pins to make them wider.
-We oversize all of the parts, then trim off the top after machining to remove that tear out, which is unavoidable with the Cantek. I think this step can be removed with a cnc but I don't know if it will 100% remove it. Wood just doesn't like to be cut in certain ways.
-Dust collection required modification to get it to mediocre. It's still not great with a 4" port, and extra guarding/deflection added. Better than as it came, but still not great.
-For operator comfort, and dust collection, the spindle should be horizontal, not vertical. Most of your drawers sides are going to be around 21" deep or less. They go in vertically. Most of the time it's fine, but when you have a really wide drawer, say 30 or 40 inches wide, the front of the machine is blocked off by those long parts hanging out in front of the machine. If they were vertical, that would negate that issue. You'd also have a fairly consistent distance the parts would be hanging out the front, which should make it easier for the operator.
-The stops are horrifically bad. I made replacements from MDF on the cnc. The plastic ones that come with will deform from tightening them down, even when being careful. Adding a plate to spread out the load of the bolt might help that? They also change dimension with temperature. There's no way to really fine tune the position of them. I ended up making a setup board for the sides and the fronts/backs where you set both stops at the same time on that face of the table, referencing off of the other face with a mark put in by the cnc to line up or index the two setup boards to one another. This is when I learned that the pins and tails are not 1" on center, but 25mm. It's close, but that .4mm was causing a weird cumulative error, that I never could figure out until I learned the centers are what they are.
The machine works, it sucks to get dialed in. It's just not the best solution for me anymore. It's way better than cutting them with a router and a jig, I've made thousands of drawers with a router and a jig. (I wore out multiple routers, and even a template) The Cantek is waaaaay better than doing it that way.
I'm looking at the single spindle dovetailer from Mereen Johnson. I think that's the right solution for my shop. But it's a big chunk of capital considering the small improvement I'll get out of that investment. We're probably making about 150 drawers a month right now. Sometimes less, sometimes more. I sell them to a couple of other shops around here, I wouldn't mind chasing more of that work down. It's easy money and mistakes are pretty cheap when they happen.