A Needle Cutter to Scratch Build

[Dan-O]

Hello all. I'm a tinkerer and shop guy and am tired of either cutting foam board parts by hand or...using my cnc with a teeny tiny endmill as the results are never great. Even when I use a super sharp tiny end mill and play with all the feeds and speeds the cuts are usually jagged and require a lot of sanding clean up. And there's lots of dust.

I'm not new to CNC stuff, 3D printers, or diode laser cutters but have been intrigued with needle cutters and am finally getting around to designing one. This will be a drop in unit that will just slide in where the DeWalt router lives. I've made other drop in mounts for pens and drag knifes so this will just be another iteration.

Currently working on the balance location for the flywheel. At first there was a lot of vibration as to be expected but with a little counter balance it really smooths out.

Not sure if this is the right place to post this, please direct me to a different forum location if need be. I'm always open to suggestions!

 

[Merv]

...Not sure if this is the right place to post this, please direct me to a different forum location if need be...

Great looking design. I've got a needle cutter design that I need to share as well.

As far as where to post, you might consider putting it in the 3D Printing, CNC, Laser Cutters and more section.

 

[Dan-O]

Awesome. Thanks. I'll look forward to your design as well as any others.

 

[Dan-O]

A few more pics from the front and side. I should get back to the day job, but this is just more fun!

 

[Foamforce]

Looks beefy (good).

Check out scottiniowa’s head design for inspiration. It’s been working really well for me for a couple years. The linear slides work well. In the original ERC design, the sliding mechanism was touchy.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5442906

 

[Dan-O]

Appreciate the replies. Great to hear it's working well. For z axis movement I'll be using the cnc to raise and lower the cutter so it's pretty much a block to drop in. I was really amazed that such a small counter balance smoothed it out tremendously. For the bearings I'm using some small ones I harvested from a couple old broken 3D printers. So many useful parts in so many things to cobble together. And, that's part of the fun of it all too.