New CNC Drag Knife, and a very large Cast Iron Part

November 17, 2011 by: Andrew Grevstad

New Prod­uct:  CNC Drag Knife

We’ve added this CNC Drag Knife to the web­store.  We knew it could cut sign vinyl — that’s cool enough, on its own — but also wanted to see what else you might be able to do with it. So we came up with a few appli­ca­tion notes for how to use it with the help of our friend Scott at SDM Fab­ri­cat­ing, including:

  • Sign Vinyl  (you can buy some here, don’t for­get the appli­ca­tion tape!)
  • Gas­kets
  • Cop­per Traces
  • Metal Shims

Down­load with Vixy | YouTube Con­verter

You can down­load our appli­ca­tion notes here.  I also know that you can cut paper for sand­blast masks, etc., as well.  Does any­body have any other ideas?  Let us know.

 

Choo! Choo!

This mon­ster part is a smoke box for a 1/8 scale Union Pacific Chal­lenger Loco­mo­tive.  4th Axis work was pro­grammed with Sprut­CAM.  The fix­tur­ing looks very well engi­neered, to say the least.  Thanks to Tor­mach PCNC 1100 owner Steve Gnas for the video.

 


Down­load with Vixy | YouTube Con­verter

 

I believe this is the the full-scale edition:


Down­load with Vixy | YouTube Con­verter

Wow!

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Rat­ing: 9.0/10 (9 votes cast)
New CNC Drag Knife, and a very large Cast Iron Part, 9.0 out of 10 based on 9 ratings
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Andrew Grevstad

About

With over ten years of pro­fes­sional expe­ri­ence in advanced man­u­fac­tur­ing sys­tems, dig­i­tal design tools, and applied soft­ware, Andy Grevs­tad has worked in prod­uct devel­op­ment and tech­ni­cal sup­port for Tor­mach since 2008. Grevs­tad has received engi­neer­ing degrees from Michi­gan Tech­no­log­i­cal Uni­ver­sity and a M.S. and Uni­ver­sity of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor to Dig­i­tal Machin­ist mag­a­zine and also blogs weekly about CNC milling and related top­ics on the Tor­mach blog, Milling Around.

11 Responses to “New CNC Drag Knife, and a very large Cast Iron Part”

  1. R.DesJardin says:
    November 17, 2011 at 1:38 pm

    The cut­ter is a great idea.
    Hey it’s great to see all the dif­fer­ent projects guys do. I give this 10 stars but clicked too soon on the above star scale, my apologies.

  2. Andrew Grevstad Andy G. says:
    November 17, 2011 at 1:47 pm

    I think so too. I’m going to make some sweet cus­tom tool box stick­ers with it when I get a chance. Not exactly our idea, though. These knives are made by Wid­get­works, and we are a reseller.

    I think the gas­ket idea is very cool– hadn’t seen that done before.

  3. Cairns says:
    November 17, 2011 at 2:28 pm

    I recently built a drag knife for my Tor­mach using the cut­ter from a Cri­cut machine. How­ever mine wasn’t spring loaded. Using a cut­ting mat under it seemed to help quite a bit but a spring is def­i­nitely the way to go.

    A tip: when defin­ing your tool path it helps to over­lap the start and end points of your cut, oth­er­wise you’ve got to hand cut the tab that remains.

    http://cairnstech.tumblr.com/post/10305951263/cutting-vinyl

    http://cairnstech.tumblr.com/post/10331504006/in-my-previous-post-i-discussed-making-a-custom

  4. Andrew Grevstad Andy G. says:
    November 17, 2011 at 2:37 pm

    Some­body here had a cri­cut (Heather, I think — she’s our web per­son) and that’s what got us talk­ing about this.

    Yes, that’s absolutely true — you need to be intel­li­gent about lead-ins and lead-outs. We have some addi­tional pro­gram­ming tips in the Tech Doc­u­ment for the product:

    http://www.tormach.com/uploads/454/CNC_Drag_Knife_Application_Notes-pdf.html

    I hadn’t noticed your blog before — very cool.

  5. harley573 says:
    November 17, 2011 at 2:39 pm

    Yeah, so where’s the video of that 4th axis part being cut?

  6. Andrew Grevstad Andy G. says:
    November 17, 2011 at 3:19 pm

    I’ll see if they exist…

  7. harley573 says:
    November 22, 2011 at 9:08 am

    I just got my 4th axis all set up, so it’d be neat to see. Of course, it wouldn’t hurt my feel­ings if Tor­mach posted more 4th axis videos as well!

  8. brucec12 says:
    November 28, 2011 at 9:04 pm

    How thick was the shim Brass?? I have been using photo-etch for cut­ting out shapes in 0.010″ Brass sheet. This would be great for some of the less intri­cate pieces and would be alot more convienient!

  9. Andrew Grevstad Andy G. says:
    November 29, 2011 at 10:12 am

    Brass was .030″ thick. Check out Page 8 of this doc­u­ment for appli­ca­tion notes with the Brass shim stock.

    http://www.tormach.com/uploads/454/CNC_Drag_Knife_Application_Notes-pdf.html

    Def­i­nitely agree this is going to be less work then photo etching.

  10. Scott_M says:
    November 30, 2011 at 9:37 pm

    The brass shim stock was .002″. The pro­gramed Z depth was .030″ with the spring pres­sure adjusted very high. Also to get clean cuts 2 passes were used. I think .010″ may be a bit beyond the capa­bil­i­ties of the drag knife. Pos­si­bly with a heav­ier spring it would work.

    Scott

  11. Andrew Grevstad Andy G. says:
    December 6, 2011 at 8:38 am

    Whoops. Scott is right. I’m going to change the appli­ca­tion note sheet so this infor­ma­tion is included.

    Andy