About half the price of the leading brand and some cool features of it's own. Unique construction with single piece solid AL body, 2 double sealed bearing. It uses #19 Heavy Duty X-Acto blades which are the same thickness as utility blades (.025") and inexpensive (couple bucks for a 5 pk.). Blade change is easy and blade is located into position with dowels.
The other drag knives I've seen have too much offset for the use I'd have for it, which is cutting rubber sandblasting resist on my router. My new vinyl cutter won't cut clear through the 40 mil/1.1 mm Anchor brand stuff.
Have you tried cutting Anchor rubber sandblast stencil with it? I'm wondering if it would catch and/or pull while it was cutting.
I haven't had to cut any since the old vinyl cutter gave up the ghost. Actually, I haven't made a sandblasted sign since I got VCarve Pro in 2009. My how time flies.
Your idea of 2-sided tape, or maybe 3M 77 spray glue, sounds like it'd help. A vacuum table with a porous top might be the ticket. The material comes on a plastic liner. I bet it would be a fairly easy thing to solve, if it even needed solving.
What's probably going to happen is me waiting to figure it out till the point a customer really wants a sandblasted sign... then I'll have to scramble.
For drag knives that are made for use with utility or X-Acto blades (most of them), there are a few defining features:
1. bearing for spin (some would argue the spindle bearing may be enough, but why chance it)
2. blade cutting edge at 45 degrees
3. distance of blade support from tip
4. rigidity of overall device.
5. offset (dictates material thickness and min radius as well)
My design is the same as all the others on #1 and #2. I’m using an X-Acto blade as they are inexpensive and the tip geometry doesn’t vary with many different brands like utility blades.
#3 and #4 are where all the design is and what makes mine different.
On #3, I have the solid AL body taper out to 4.0mm from the tip, so the blade is very well supported. This is important such that when cornering, the device spins instead of just bending the blade.
On #4, I have a solid AL one-piece body design and the blade is locked into position with 2 bolts. It is very solid and there is no play whatsoever.
#5 is just a choice. Because the blade angle is 45 degrees, if you cut more material than your offset, then try to corner, the leading edge of the cutter will have to go backwards to make the corner, hence this is your limit. I picked a middle of the road value, but I can work with you if you want something different. There are tradeoffs. A smaller offset will allow more intricate work, but mean thinner material and probably means going slower too. My video is very fast (even before speeding up the film) but I’m only cutting card stock.
Pen Marking Tools from www.cosmos-industrial.com also>> CNC Drag Knife is back!
Nice.. Have been looking at drag knives for awhile. Will be using them to cut custom coroplast packaging boxes. I have a box design and a special bit to see how well it will cut with that. If there are too many fuzzies on the edges then a drag knife was the next cutting option.
Have you cut coroplast with it? I watched the video on vinyl.
Vectric of course! VCarve and Aspire have a dragknife gadget and also a plasma/drag knife fillet tool (not sure if cut 3D has this last one). These programs are very helpful in programming. You can also do a fair amoutn with profile passes and I believe there are some resources online also that are useful. There are probably some other software packages that can also be used, but Vectric stuff is what I'm familiar with. Thanks
Pen Marking Tools from www.cosmos-industrial.com also>> CNC Drag Knife is back!
I have purchased one of these. When it comes in I will post a review. I don't have any prior experience with drag knives so I am a true virgin.
Also, there have been some questions posted about using the drag knife for different materials. I purchased the Lcheapo laser for myself for Christmas and added it to my CNC machine. It cuts many thin materials 'like a laser'. Not sure how it would work on rubber or other materials. If you send me a sample I will give it a go with both the drag knife and the laser.
Send me a private message (I think you can do that on this site).
Thanks Pedio,
I look forward to your review. This product looks like it may be a winner and the maker has put the price point in a range where it can certainly be competitive. However, the proof is in the performance.
What type of materials do you intend to use in your review?
Assuming you're both in the USA... If you message your USPS mailing address(s) to me, I'll send some pieces of the Anchor 1.1mm rubber sandblast masking for you to test. I'd like to know how the drag knife cuts it, and even how the laser does with it.
