A face frame cabinet is an ordinary sheet-goods carcass with a solid timber frame of vertical stiles and horizontal rails screwed to its front. The frame squares the carcass, hides the panel edges and gives the cabinet a solid wood face — at the cost of roughly 20 mm of inside width on each side.
The frame stiffens the carcass and hides the edges, which saves edge banding. It also lets you scribe to an out-of-plumb wall, since you can plane the outer stile without touching the carcass.
In exchange it eats width: a 38 mm stile each side takes 76 mm off the opening. On a 600 mm cabinet that leaves a 448 mm opening instead of 562 — the reason a face frame drawer holds less than a frameless one of the same overall size.
Stiles and rails join to each other with pocket holes: an angled bore in the face of one part, into which a screw picks up the end grain of the other. It is the joint that made the North American method, because it needs neither clamps nor drying time.
The generator gives the pocket hole positions, but they are drilled on a jig: their angle is outside what a 3-axis CNC can do, since it machines perpendicular to the bed.
A frameless (European, 32 mm) carcass carries its fronts directly on the panel edges; a face frame carcass carries a solid timber frame on the front, and the fronts hang on that. Frameless gives more interior volume, face frame gives more installation tolerance and a solid wood face.
38 mm is the usual width for an outer stile, 50 mm for a centre stile shared between two openings. Rails are normally the same width as the stiles, except the top rail, which is sometimes widened to 50 mm to take the worktop fixings.
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