Small Scale CNC work required, any takers?

Hi All,

I have quite a few old plough planes by STANLEY & RECORD UK which all require sets of cutting irons. Although the two makers planes are essentially similar there is a difference in the way the adjustable irons work, also the numbers of irons in each set.

In order to sell well they really need a full set of cutters, not just the one or two they usually arrive with.

I have made a set in the past by hand on the milling machine and filing but as I need approx 20 sets made in at least 3 different patterns, that is 20 sets of EACH pattern CNC seems to perhaps be the way to go if economic.

The original material is 'Tungsten Steel' but any suitable grade that can have the cutting edged hardened & tempered will be fine.

Here is a photo of the ones that I need most urgently they fit a RECORD UK model:044.

I can supply a drawing in Fusion 3D with the material laid out as a sheet with all the grooves running across the top and would need to know the way that the irons would be separated to width.

Milled, slitting saw, brake press??????

I would not trust my drawing to be useable for CAM though as I have never done this before. May need to be redone by the operator.

Hopefully someone on here may take up the challenge at a price I can afford !?

The other set I need urgently is only 3 blades per set with no grooves in 1/8", 3/16" and 1/4" widths; 3 1/2" long. 15 sets required.

OR am i really in dream land?

Cheers., Martin

Have you thought about using Gauge plate of the required width then it only needs the adjuster slots and rough bevel machining and taking to thickness for 1/8" nominal. May be less machine time than cutting from sheet or 3.5" wide stock.

I wonder if it would not be easier to buy a set of replacements, can't see buying the material, having them CNC cut, hardened properly in an oven and then cleaning up being much cheaper than buying a set for £40 retail.

Edited By JasonB on 13/11/2018 16:20:38

Hi Jason,

Point taken but I have no idea of what the costs would be to do this amortized over 20 sets, hence the original question.

£40 for a set would be totally out of the ball park. Thats £800 for 20 sets!

I would be happy milling the slots all at one go after milling the sheet to size to allow for the saw cuts. but using a slitting saw took forever on the set I did.

Could they be cut on a guillotine to an accurate size perhaps, doing loads of one size then moving on to the next?

I managed to harden them at the business end very quickly then quench in oil to temper, did not take long. These cutters generally get very little use by the buyer as one nearly always finds that only the 3 smallest sizes ever seem to get honed and used. The rest always appear unused.

I can only go for this if it can be done quickly and easily as otherwise I wait for cutters to turn up as and when but full sets make the planes much more attractive.

Cheers, Martin

Hi Martin

I think you are, cost of material and heat treatment + grinding alone will amount to a tidy sum, you also have to hope the material doesn't distort when heat treating.

Emgee

If 3mm ( 0.118" )  would fit you could make your own both cost and time effectively* from Gauge Plate.

*Cost and time effectively may not be as cheaply as you expect, you are falling into the trap of allowing your mind to suggest that what a part retails at when sourced from a factory making hundreds of thousands of identical parts might have any relationship to "Time and Materials" for short runs of parts.

Edited By Nick Hulme on 13/11/2018 20:30:29

A few thoughts....

400 pieces or so that's a lot. Waterjet cutting may be the best way to cut them out no heat distortion or hard edges that will be a problem if laser cut.

Maybe hand grinding using a jig or hand milling.
Gauge plate tends to come in small pieces the waterjet cutter may have a problem holding them, another jig may be needed.

Regards
John

Some water jet cutters have machines capable of angled cuts. I am not sure if it would be cost effective it does require special programming. You would still have to grind and hone them just less material to grind off.

For hardening can you simply harden and quench the cutting edge then draw the temper to the required hardness it. It would leave nice colouring near the cutting tip too. I don't do it very often and my methods are crude.

I am sure someone on the forum will have better knowledge and point you in the right direction.

Regards
John

Hi Martin, one of the jobs I have done in the past was making blades for RR and these were cut from a power hacksaw blade which was through hardened it was about 3.5 mm thick. I used a slitting grinding wheel to cut them out on a surface grinder then ground to size on same grinder. We would make them in batches of about 50 blades no re- hardening. We did make some fine pole laminated blocks to hold them by as these had to be within 0.005 mm tolerance but I think yours could be held in a vice with no problem. Perhaps you could find a used blade if the thickness is thick enough.

David

How wide are the grooves? Would need to be cut with small slot drill, in gauge plate might have a short life.

Can I ask how much would you expect or hope to pay for this work?

just curious

May be better to gang up some cutters on a horizontal mill rather than cutting each slot with a small milling cutter, looking at the blades for my No50 Stanley that is how they have been done.

With the number you need have you approached one of the aftermarket suppliers to see if they will supply direct at trade or at least something between trade & retail could knock 25-50% off that £40 retail price.

I suppose the price really comes down to how much more a plane with a full set of cutters will likely sell for, I expect this will drop when e-bay is flooded with your 20 odd planes. Would not have thought there was a big enough market to make it worth the hassle as the plough plane is really an obsolete tool these days except for the hobby user who wants to use handtools over a router.

Edited By JasonB on 14/11/2018 09:26:41

Martin, if you take your car into a garage for a service you pay upwards of £100 per hour, I imagine a small engineering business would be charging roughly the same, so question is how long to make them? In my opinion at least 20 hours work so ball park figure £2000. Most probably plus VAT.

Hi All,

Just got some gauge plate from Coventry Grinders, 500mm long by the 90mm width I need for £23 delivered.

Went to see two or three local engineering firms who showed, as expected, showed zero interest.

Finally found a sheet metal company close by who have bought some bits and pieces from me over the years and he tried the material on his shear which made the wanted part curl so that was no go.

Then he used a cooled slowish running precision chop saw to cut me a set of 3 of the easier non grooved blades at 1/8", 3/16" and 1/4" which were perfect and accurate to about .1mm

Currently doing me 9 more sets of these which I will put the bevels on by hand and heat treat the ends only, quite easy in these smaller sizes.

He saw work holding as a problem for bigger runs and suggested that I buy the plate in 1 meter lengths which makes sense.

He does not see a problem doing the pre grooved sets which will need a little hand finishing so I am going to mill an 8" length of slots and bevel on the longer material and have a trial run to see.

I am lucky enough to have a pretty good supply of new small slot mills so will measure the grooves to see what will do and have a go.

His price for 10 sets of 3 irons and 10 sets of 8 irons is £40, so for 110 cuts pretty damn good I think!

Jason, naturally I will NOT be flooding the market with these, just trickling them on now and then! I take your point about them being an 'obsolete' tool what with routers and so on but there are a lot of people out there who like the peace and quiet of good hand tools.

Jason, the Stanley 50 blades have that unusual small curve at the end of each slot so I think that you are right about the horizontal milling, that said it would not matter if they were straight through. Totally differenet spacing to the Record ones also!

Then there are the side slotted irons, again different sides on Record and Stanley models; thats before we get into the No:45 & No:55 multiplanes with LOTS of cutters, I shall NOT be going there!

Cutters for those do make good money by the 'EACH' so when I have sorted the sets for the 45's and 55's that I have the extras will sell easily.

Cheers, all, Martin

Hi Martin, the person doing the cuts for you will likely be out of pocket when all costs are taken into account.

Blade wear/sharpening or disc replacement, power and lighting, setting up and labour will soon be eaten by the £40, IMO he's doing you a big favour.

Emgee

Fastest way would be to gang mill the grooves on a horizontal mill.

Neil,

Totally agree but I have to use what I have.... This is all a bit 'suck it and see' I know but one has to give these things a try.

Emgee, I agree he is being more than fair and we have agreed that if I need more we will renegotiate if needed.

There are other special irons for spokeshaves that are also very hard to find which I am looking at.

This time of year my car boot hunting is at a very low ebb so we have time to explore these avenues.

Cheers, Martin

Hi Niel, You clearly haven't the time to read all posts, you missed Jason's suggesting the same method.

Emgee

Hi all,

I have had a go at milling these grooves myself and it has cost me about 4 carbide 2mm cutters so far!

Bit of trial and error with speed and feeds has finally got it sorted out:

Funnily enough faster feeds worked better although still pretty slow work. Most of the breakages were at the end of the cut accidentally bumping into the uncut previous pass. Fortunatly I have lots of small cutters that I have never had cause to use before. I trammed the work in with a Dti and total runout is only about 1.5 thou over the distance milled.

It does look like I am going to have to get this done on a horizontal mill to make sense for the quantity I need.

Some progress though, I will get these cut to length in the week and see how that goes.

Cheers, Martin

If there is no access to a vertical mill can they be clamped vertically to an angle plate or fixture and cut with a slitting saw? maybe annealing the ends first to be kind to the saw.

Hi John McN, I presume you meant horizontal mill?

I looked at the clamping in the vertical plane idea, but it seemed that no matter what I did with what I have at hand the whole thing was going to move about and 'sing' like a banshee..

There is no way around the amount of projection of the work to get to the 4 grooves needed and resetting and tramming after each groove would be a RPITA!

As to material it is supplied soft (relatively!)

Cheers Martin