Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Making a Pioneer knife Part 2 - milling grinds and drilling

 Hello! It's been a while... I  finally found some time to show you second episode of making the Pioneer knife. Me and my brother have been thinking about making knife grinds with use of milling machine for a long long time. The most important question was: is it possible to make it with a compact milling machine and homemade CNC control. The answer is: Yes! One of the problem was to choose a proper milling cutter. We decided to use a bullnose cutter with tungsten steel round inserts (8mm diameter). We chose it because of its durability, long tool life and the smooth finish that can be made with cutter of such a shape. We have made grinds for four blanks with one set od inserts and it seems that it is possible to grind many, many more knives without changing the inserts. We had to make a special holder for the Pioneer blanks as you can see on the pictures. It helps us to fix the blanks to the table and to position the CNC machine. You can see that a lot of coolant is needed for the milling process. It took us one whole day to make grinds and holes on four blanks of Pioneer knife. Grinds are rought but all of them will be finished with belt grinder in the next episodes. Stay tuned and don't forget to watch the video :)



4 comments:

  1. Hello and congratulations for the machine and the work you've done.
    I wanted to ask if you can tell me which brand and model that your insert milling cutter.
    Best regards.

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    Replies
    1. The milling machine is Optimum BF20 Vario, but the milling cutters are just some noname stuff, made probably in China.

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  2. cnc milling machine What a fabulous publish it's already been.. I am grateful for you along with count on more quantity of articles like these kind of. Thanks greatly.

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  3. I always admire those that are good with their hands so hats off to you! I'm fascinated on how you make it appear that knife making is so easy! Of course, I won't try this one since I don't have the aptitude or the skill for it. I would rather buy ready-made knives - but that doesn't mean I can't admire the workmanship of others! For information and tips on knives, I've stumbled on this page see http://myoutdoorslife.com/diy/how-to-make-a-knife.html

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