Taking my first big cut on the Fadal!
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- Опубликовано: 21 май 2015
- For more information on my hunting / camping / survival knives: store.goughcustom.com/
Last night I needed to make a fixture for a second operation for the new Resolute blades. First step in the machining process was to square up the ends of the bar so I'd have nice clean reference faces.
To square up the ends I took a big cut with a 3/8" endmill! 0.625" depth of cut, 0.15" width of cut at 40IPM. Pretty crazy to see the machine just hum through this, much more power than I'm used to! 
Развлечения
i remember seeing your videos a couple of years ago, looked like you set up shop in a basement and did everything by hand. now, you have tools and a hell of a machine. the sky is the limit man, keep at it
USCommando Thanks dude! It's definitely been an exciting journey so far! The next few months are going to be pretty big, lots of work going on!
Gough Custom Keep us posted! =)
Kyle Davidson Will do mate!
+ Gough Customs you are the reason I started knife making. I used to watch your vids and say I want to do that someday, and now I am so thank you and keep up the good work!
tyler price Very cool Tyler! Thanks and keep up the good work!
Nice! It is going to be fun to watch what you come up with using your new CNC. Good luck and have a great weekend!
SugarcreekForge Thanks mate!
good to see you back!
Thanks mate! more videos coming soon!
I recently learned about the Starret precision blanks while flipping thru their tool catalog, but didn't realize it came in regular old mild steel in addition to the tool steels.
Pretty cool, and I wish you luck on this endeavor (and look forward to the vids!). Was hoping to get one of those handmade sick blades when your books opened up, but I could warm to the idea of owning a blade made with robotic assistance...
Greg Fowler Hey Greg! The starret low carbon stock is very handy, I will be making sure to keep some of it around from now on.
One important point about the robot: I'm using it to make my knives even better!
damn thats beautiful. we all love to see your journey and that your business getting bigger and cooler 8D
Le Kat Thanks for following along mate!
I'm trying to be cool and thankful for the knives I already own, but man I'm thinking about getting one of these. Would be cool to get a first run off this beast! Congrats on all your hard work paying off. Love the vids and blades.
CampfireTalk Thanks man! Glad you like the knives and videos!
Unfortunately the whole first batch is earmarked to cover my backorders, but more will be coming soon!
Cool! Nice to see it up and running :)
russtuff Thanks Russ! Im pretty pleased with how it's turned out!
Hi
Nice to see your new cnc in action and doing what it should which is making chips.
Hope all goes well.
Regards
Mark
Over the pond in the UK
Mark Parkinson Thanks Mark!
Bloody hell! I know it's programming and engineering but it still looks like magic.
I still feel the same way! it's completely amazing!
Whoohoo Aaron...Congratulations, been a long time coming and she's a beaut! First serious chips on quality 1018, looks pretty Nice! Those coated carbide mills got with the program on it! Good looking vice too, Bud...I assume its pretty square with good spizzerentum. Couldn't see a brand? Think you may need to put some sound deadening on walls in that cubby area, though. Had my sound up pretty good thinking you were going to talk, made the misses Jump...Doh! Thanks for sharing all your hard work and a big first Happy Day makin' chips! ~PJ
pjsalchemy Hey PJ! Thanks mate!
The vise is made by a company in California called "Orange Vise Company", they make some really nice stuff!
Will be putting in an enclosure for the machine soon hopefully, with any luck that should cut down on the sounds a bit too.
-A
Hey, I just wanted to blame you for my new knife making hobby... Seriously though, I probably would not have started making knives if it werent for inspiration from your videos. Thank you and Good bless!
Chip Bussey Haha, well I hope you're enjoying yourself!
Can you cut multiple knives on this fixture at once? Love your videos btw.
Well done! It's obvious to me that you've done your homework. Hope your business partner recognizes your leadership and don't give you no lip!
Darryl Machtmes Thanks Darryl! No business partner for me which is good and bad... Bad in that I have to put in all the money, good in that if I ever do start making money I don't have to split it with someone else!
I was just calling the milling machine your business partner.
Darryl Machtmes Milling machine gets to uppity he can just threaten to unplug it. :)
Darryl Machtmes Haha, ah sorry I missed that. Well point still stands, still takes half my money :)
Have you considered the possibility of programming it to also cut the bevels for your blades to save time and effort?
The concept of milling the blade bevel is used often with mass produced swords, so I was curious if you were going to go down that route.
Connor McMullen looks like you were on point.
Awesome way to make knives and where in canada do u live,keep up the good work
Robert Rendarić Thanks mate! I'm located in Toronto.
Great video. Would have been great to see a close up of the piece of work at the end but overall cool milling machine.
Thanks mate! I will hopefully do more of this style of video soon, but better!
Hi,
How far off would you say you are from producing knives again? Can't wait!
lazaglider I'll actually have an announcement regarding that in about 2 weeks!
Gough Custom
Great, thanks!
Nice hold down clamps on the vise. Where can I get some?
carabela125 They actually came with the Vise! They're called 'toe clamps' I'm sure somewhere else must sell them...
Thats nice! What cnc language is it using? U programmed it by yourself? What parameters u had? FPR and others? what about the rest of the material? Cheers mate, awesome work!
Mateusz Nowicki Hey mate! The machine is programmed in standard G-code, the programs are written with the help of CAD/CAM software. The material is not terribly expensive, most of the expense is in turning it into parts!
Newbie question. I'm no expert. How come oil or some sort of coolant wasn't used to keep the bit cool in this case?
Ifiok Obot Hey mate! The tool I'm using in this case is solid carbide (which resists heat very well) and is also coated with a special coating called TiAIN which forms a protective layer at high temperatures. Basically the tool is designed to be run dry. Most of the heat is actually put into the material that's removed and flung away which helps keep the tool cool as well.
That's pretty damn cool...pun intended
Very nice machine. You could say you are not custom hand made knifes anymore ? but mass produced.
martony03 I've avoided the phrase hand-made for a while now because people have a lot of different ideas about what it means. They're not mass produced though even with the robotic help, mass produced implies they were produced by many different people and that the quality suffers, neither of which will be the case with my knives.
Is this a different CNC machine than you were using before? Whats your best recommendation for an entry level CNC machine?
+Dr Dank Hey mate! This is the only CNC milling machine that I have had... I have had a small CNC router previously which was designed to cut wood, and also a small manual milling machine, but those both have very different uses!
Why did you turn down the spindle? It sounded like it was doing fine.
Not sure honestly, I probably just got nervous. This was the first VMC I ever ran (still the only one I've run) so I really wasn't sure how big a cut was appropriate. I push the machine a lot harder now!
How is the blank separated from the base material which is being held in place by the clamp?
directx1222 In this case I'm actually machining the 'fixture' which is basically a piece to hold knife blades in future operations. There's no actual knife in this video unfortunately!
directx1222 Hope I'm understanding your question correctly!
Gough Custom Oh I see, all the best with expanding the business. I'm looking forward to seeing videos of CNC blank cutting!
directx1222 Thanks mate! Better quality videos coming soon!
How is the run-out on the spindle? Sounds a bit off.
You've got a good ear! The runout is not great unfortunately, over 0.001" in fact which is obviously not ideal. It's still running acceptably for the moment. I plan to replace the spindle and the XYZ ballscrews when I get some spare cash.
Ouch, .001 is huge, you could always compensate on the CAM by leaving that thousandth but it still has a taper to the cut. Hope the spindle isnt too crazy expensive to fix.
Haha, yeah it's not ideal! Honestly it's likely going to be best just to pull the whole spindle cartridge and replace it... Will cost around $4500 or so to do so, but then I'll have a nice brand new spindle which will be sweet!
Have you considered replacing control equipment? I imagine that motion is somewhat outdated with this original controller?
+AAMGG Hey mate! The control is actual very high performance for it's age... Zero problems at all with it, I would have to invest a lot of money to get a modern control that's better actually!
Thats good to hear :)
I presume Mach3, LinuxCNC etc... systems are out of the question in your case?
+AAMGG Mach3 is a bit of a shambles from what I've seen, but LinuxCNC is very capable and I've built machines using it in the past!
However the control on this machine is still more capable in a number of ways than LinuxCNC is. The user interface doesn't look as pretty, but it's actually easier to use in a number of vital ways... It has nice wizards for setting tool lenghts and fixture offsets, it can do tool wear compensation easily within the control, as well as tracking usage time for individual tools.
LinuxCNC can also do all those things, but the interfaces for dealing with them tend to be annoying/incomplete from what I've seen. Given the choice of magically choosing between either the current control on this machine or LinuxCNC I would still choose the current control I would say!
If I was really looking for an improvement it would have to be a modern industrial control like the ones fitted to modern HAAS machines!
No lubricant, doesn't things heat up after a while ?
Luc Malenfant Hey Luc! The tools have a special coating on them that reflect the heat so it goes into the chips rather than into the tool. That combined with an air blast seems to work very well!
Gough Custom Thanks for the answer, I learn so much stuff with you and your videos, keep up the great work !!
Can't believe your not using coolant? What's the life time of your bits?
+aHigher Power The tooling that I'm using is specially designed to run without coolant. It's AiTIN coated solid carbide. My tool life so far is 'ok' but that's because my spindle is wonky and it wears the tools prematurely. Machining dry with modern coated tooling designed for the job should give same or better tool life than running with coolant.
+Gough Custom
Coolantless tooling sounds the bomb. The same tooling should be available for lathes too yeah?
+Aaron DC mediA I believe so. I haven't had the chance to do any CNC lathe work though so I can't say for sure.
+Gough Custom So are you going to rebuild the spindle sometime?
+F22xSTEALTHx At some point yes. It's actually cheaper to buy a new spindle rather than rebuild the old one so that's probably what I'll do... The current spindle is still running fine, it just has more runout than I'd like, about 0.0006" or so if I remember right.
So now that you have a cnc machine is the price of the resolute going to drop?
abialo2010 No probably not mate, when I was making them by hand it always took so long that I wasn't really making any sort of reasonable hourly rate. The machine will help bring it more toward being reasonable hopefully, but of course the machine itself has a lot of cost associated with it. The price will be staying about the same I believe.
Gough Custom that is very reasonable, people gotta understand there are costs in utilities, material and craftsmanship whether it be by hand or CnC, its your design and time spent making it a quality product.
I haven't bought one from you yet, but when I can afford it I'll gladly pay the price.
perhaps you could come up with a budget knife design and have the cnc knock out multiple blanks and just do a simple no scale handle that can be either a neck knife/edc.
love the knives and appreciate the effort you put into creating quality tools for your patrons.
-best wishes
christopher onciu I've been thinking about trying to do a lower cost version, it's something I will keep in mind!
Gough Custom The first video of yours I saw was the Antarctic Custom and then I watched the Infantry vid. I had never seen anyone put more care into the process of building a knife and I honestly wondered how you could possibly make a comfortable living at that level of effort per piece.
I'm so glad you've been able to acquire this, hopefully it gives you many years of dependable service. My guess is you'll still obsess over the material removal as much as everything else, but at least you won't actually be DOING as much of it. :)
jcims Thanks mate! I think it's awesome that the machine will let me focus on refining my process as much as possible, that should pay off pretty immediately in terms of my overall quality levels going up!
What cad/cam are you using? What type of file do you export?
+lowsideswitch I'm using Fusion 360 for CAD/CAM. I export a g-code text file that my machine can read directly.
Later your going to wish you had the tin the goes around it and coolant. It will help the chips from hitting the floor and clean up is a breeze with a garden hose on the hi pressure side of the pump. Just rinse it down. nice machine tho i use one daily.
Bigwingrider1800 I plan to build an enclosure for it when I have some spare time and cash! I build some screens that go next to the machine to help contain the chips for the moment... I'm running coated carbide tools which are designed to run dry, and I'm using an air blast to clear chips so I haven't missed coolant so far!
i signed up to get an email when i can buy one of your knives...i'm all over it when i can
Blair Raymond Thanks Blair, I appreciate that!
Nice work Azz. All you need now is a cover to go around your mill. Then you can let the chips and coolant fly ;-) Cheers, Azza
DCTTeacher1 Thanks Aaron! Yeah definitely need an enclosure, will be a good excuse to learn how to weld anyway!
Hi aaron! Do you have a email to contact you? Please i have a question for the CNC machine
Gough Custom That's not an excuse though. It's just good to have a basic understanding how to weld, period.
William Garcia do you want my email or Gough Custom email? I am unsure as we share the same first name. Cheers, Aaron (Dctteacher1)
Gough Custom shame we don't live closer to each other mate. I could help you fabricate that enclosure for the Fadal. Canada is a bit of a hike from Melbourne. Hey, I'm stoked with your progress though. It's a huge learning curve mate. Proud of ya ;-). Cheers, Azza
Have you tried using roughing endmillls for your heavy cuts? They will speed up your procuction and save you on tooling. Then you can make a finish pass with your fine endmills. Just Fyi
Hey mate! unfortunately if i used roughers i would run out of spots in my toolchanger!
With a tool change and a small mod to the program you could run both. Save the program under two different names and change diameters and length offset in the finish program then the tool changer quantity would not be a problem
***** Sorry mate, can you explain that again? I'm not quite sure I get what you mean...
Sure, sorry it wasnt more clear. You can save the same program under two different names. One you can call roughing process and the other you can save under finish pass. Each program can be slightly changed on the cutter diameter and length offset to make different size tools work and you don't have to worry about the amount of tools the tool changer can hold. Roughing process can be programmed to hold say a 1/2" rougher to cut the rough profile then you could run the finishing pass program with say a 3/8" 4 flute carbide endmill to finish everything nice and neat. It would save you from buying very expensive carbide endmills when High speed steel roughers are half the cost. I hope it helps.
***** Ah gotcha! Thanks mate! Interesting idea!
Work like this fixture is very much a one-off for me, the machine will be spending most of it's time running toolpaths for production of my knives... In that case I won't be able to spend the time changing tools and so on.
I will probably end up having to run different tool cribs for different parts of my process though as I already have 12 out of 16 spots in my carousel used up!
Also I've heard good thing about deliberately avoiding the use of roughing endmills! When running HSM toolpaths like the ones I'm using the life expectency of carbide is very good. I have a friend who ran a production toolpath cutting 5/8" thick A36 steel plate every day for a month with the same 1/2" AiLTN coated carbide endmill. At the end of the month it was still cutting fine, just leaving a bit of a burr top and bottom so he replaced it!
Old style toolpaths are way harder on carbide tools because of the way it forces them into corners.
It will be interesting to see what my tool life is like after I've run some production parts! I will try to remember to keep you updated!