Originally Posted by
John TenEyck
Tabs and leaving a few thousands uncut both eliminate the necessity of using tape and CA glue, but both come with their own compromise. The problem with tabs is that the workpiece ends up having little vertical lines on the side where the bit stopped moving forward so that the Z axis can move up whatever the height is before moving forward, and then repeats where it steps back down. This even happens with 3D tabs for me. Those lines are very difficult to clean up in hard wood. And then there's still the matter of having to remove the tab.