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Need help with milling setup

I am a knife maker. So far I've used only stock removal method to make fixed knives on belt grinder. I am getting a Millrite mill soon and want to try to mill a knife on it.

A fellow knifemaker mills knife's flats(sides of the knife that come together at angle) by bolting flat steel bar to tilting table at 3-5 degrees to mill straight part of the knife. Curved tip of a knife he finishes on belt grinder off hand.

Is there any better setup I can do so straight and curved part of knife can be done on my mill?

Thanks, Alex

Reply to
Alex
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A knife can be milled by clamping the profiled blank on the flat part of the blade in a mill vice (edge up, pointy end to the side) and milling from the edge down in fine steps.

This requires a CAD model of your blade design, a 3 axis mill, and a CAM program beyond just prismatic machining. And a little bit of know how.

Reply to
Polymer Man

Sorry, I just realized you're talking about a non-CNC machine. My bad.

Reply to
Polymer Man

Make tantos. :)

Otherwise, tilt mill head the appropriate angle (half the knife edge angle), use the bottom of an end mill to cut, and calculate the complex movement of the blade so that you cut the shape you want. Not nice to do by hand, but possible - just a table of x,y and angle (rotary table) movements step by step to get the resolution you want to the shape of the knife. Of course, CNC would be the way to go.

Practically, make the steps rough enough that they are practical, and then finish the knife at grinder by hand..

Kristian Ukkonen.

Reply to
Kristian Ukkonen

Alex wrote in news:R%teh.3387$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr12.news.prodigy.net:

Purchase a tapered end mill, place the knife vertical on a parallel in the vice and change your Z height as you move past the radius toward the tip.

Reply to
Anthony

Clamp down the blade on a rotary table at an angle. Mill the straight section with the mill table and the curved part by turning the RT. Not perfect but close,

ED

Reply to
ED

I think I know the knifemaker you're talking about. I've seen his methods and been to his shop. He's a retired toolmaker and has probably forgotten more about machining than many of us know. His knives are precision instruments. And I have tried his method of milling the flats with varying degrees of success.

Just from what I know about him, if there were a better way to machine the flats with a non-CNC mill, he'd tell us, and he wouldn't waste his time with this one.

For me, it's a lot faster to grind the flats on a belt grinder than it is to mill them. Mill set-up and calculations can take me 20 minutes. In that time I can have both flats rough ground and ready for clean-up, including the point. Since I have to take the blank to the grinder anyway to taper the point and clean off the machining marks, the millwork is just for fun.

-Frank

Reply to
Frank Warner

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