Clean cut blanks

[Leading Edge Fab]

Just shipped this one.
Best yield from CPM S35VN.

 

[Don Hanson III]

Very Nice Work, Mark!!!

 

[jdm61]

Very nice, Mark. I believe that you told me a while back that you only need about .100" between parts with steel of typical thickness for knives. What kind of space do you need at the edges and particularly at the ends of the sheet?

 

[Leading Edge Fab]

3/16 - 1/4 will still keep things rigid enough to not move during cutting.

 

[Broomhead]

The skeleton (left over sheet) Would make an awesome fireplace screen, screen door decoration, etc. It looks too cool. Awesome knives, whose ever they are.

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

Mark,
I usually draw the blade shapes on the sheet, and try and nest them together with as many joint cuts as possible ( one spine meeting another, etc.). I add smaller knives to fill any blank spots, and change the blade length or handle shape to make things fit better, or get a better steel yield. Sometimes there is barely any left over steel. This is on a sheet usually 24" to 36" long and 6" to 9" wide. I cut them on the band saw, but it takes some real cut planning....and a good bit of time. If I was to send such a sheet to you, can you work from the drawings on the sheet of steel? This is .060" S35VN

 

[Leading Edge Fab]

Stacy,

I don't have a way to capture a drawing on steel. The best way is to send a rigid pattern I can trace and convert to a dxf file then were off to nesting for best yield.
Planning is the key whether cutting by hand or waterjet.

Thanks for commenting on my post!

Mark,
I usually draw the blade shapes on the sheet, and try and nest them together with as many joint cuts as possible ( one spine meeting another, etc.). I add smaller knives to fill any blank spots, and change the blade length or handle shape to make things fit better, or get a better steel yield. Sometimes there is barely any left over steel. This is on a sheet usually 24" to 36" long and 6" to 9" wide. I cut them on the band saw, but it takes some real cut planning....and a good bit of time. If I was to send such a sheet to you, can you work from the drawings on the sheet of steel? This is .060" S35VN

 

[Sandow]

Can you work with vector art?

-Sandow

 

[Leading Edge Fab]

Yes on vector art but usually is full of extra entities that we clean up.
I've optimized from ~3500 entities to 40 on art for JD logo.
We like our drawings clean or end up with machine going WTF on the geometry.

 

[Bill DeShivs]

Mark is cutting some very intricate parts for a couple of designs I plan on producing.
Cutting the parts for a lever lock automatic on a bandsaw is very time-consuming.