This gave me fits for a while. I couldn't figure out why I could get some components to glue and cut and not others. It seemed that when component axis was at a face, the cut would work, but when I tried to move the axis to the middle of the component, it wouldn't.
Then I read Thom Thom's post:
It's all about having a closed loop of edges on the red & green axes of the component. The blue axis must be pointing upwards.
That is it in a nutshell. To get a component to cut through the face it's glued to, there must be a continuous edge around the component at the component's axis, which is where it will glue itself to the face.
Thanks TT.
Check out the attachment.