Ah right. I see a lot of them have mostly down flute and a small up flute, that explains how I got confused because people were talking about them pushing the work down.

I've cut a few small pieces of MFC on my little 6040 using my standard manual tools, 1/4" with 2 straight flutes. They haven't damaged the melamine edge.

I was hoping to use the same tool for cutting the 19mm edge and for grooves which are about 6mm deep. It looks like I might be lucky and that the melamine will still be on the down flute for grooving.