Trimming is the removal of a thin layer of material from the part edge. In the system these are two different cases that are easy to confuse: preparing the edge for banding, and machining the edge with a cutter without any banding afterwards. They are configured differently.
Trimming before edge banding
A thin pass before the edge band is glued on: it removes saw chipping and leaves a clean surface for the glue. It is enabled per side and only works where the side actually has an edge band assigned — with no band, no allowance is added.
It is exactly this allowance that is built into the part sizes: the "before trimming, without edge" size is larger than the "after trimming" one by exactly the allowance. See the article "Part dimension entry modes" for details.
Machining the edge with a cutter
The other case: the edge is not banded but machined clean with a cutter. This is configured on the material, not per side: a milling tool is chosen in the material card, and the machine is determined automatically from the selected cutter. If such a tool is set and enabled, the allowance is added to all four sides of the part — regardless of whether they have banding.
This is how materials whose edge goes under a cutter rather than under a band are usually handled — compact laminate, for example. Where exactly the tool is set is described in "Individual settings for panel material".
What they have in common
- In both cases the allowance width comes from one shared company setting.
- The allowance is added to the blank size: the part comes off the saw with a margin that the cutter removes down to the final size.
- After trimming the finished part has exactly the size the operator entered in the card.