Design a machine knife

Why

A machine knife is made to its machine, so it is quoted from its own values and not from a list.

How

Open Design, choose the family, set the sizes from the machine, the old knife or the drawing and read the checks and the price.

It opens in the workbench at /app/design/machine-knives.

Families

What you set

• Family opens the knife on starting values so that something is drawn. Take the length, width, thickness and holes of a straight or toothed knife from the machine, the old knife or the drawing before you quote.
• Application names what a straight knife works in and sets the bevel angle where one is published for it.
• Type on a circular knife is one of: Top knife, flat; Top knife, dished; Bottom knife; Crush cut knife. Choosing it fills a catalogue size and its cutting angle.
• Timber on a profile knife sets the material, the cutting angle and the wedge angle.
• The moulding of a profile knife is the built in section at your width and thickness or a section you draw.
• The design module works out the angle at the edge, the bevel length, the teeth, a profile knife's blank, depth and spindle speed range and the mass.

What is checked

A block is a knife that cannot be made as stated. A warning is a published figure the knife departs from: it changes nothing and is said out loud.

Blocks

• A bevel that runs past the knife at its angle and thickness. A second bevel no wider than the main one.
• Holes that run off the knife, into each other or into the ground edge.
• A bore as large as the knife, a keyway as wide as the bore or a dished knife with no dish depth.
• Teeth that cannot be cut as stated. A second bevel on a toothed edge.
• A profile knife whose wedge is too thin to hold an edge, whose profile is deeper than the cutting circle can cut or that no list blank of its system carries.
• A hardness above the steel's data sheet. A material the family is not made in.
• More than one usable edge on a bevelled knife.

Warnings

• A paper knife bevel outside the published angles.
• A planer knife wedge that is not the one listed for its material.
• A top knife thickness outside the range listed for its bevel. A circular knife size that is not a catalogue row, which makes the knife a special.
• A tolerance tighter than published. A hole close to an edge.
• A hollow bevel, which is drawn flat. Carbide, which is priced and drawn as one piece.
• A profile knife with a cutting angle or wedge other than the published ones, a bolted knife with no holes yet or a quantity that is not whole sets.

The figures behind these checks are published ones: the Wilhelm Oberste-Beulmann data sheets for hardness, the Dienes sheets for circular knife sizes, TKM, Itotec and Challenge Machinery for paper and veneer knives and the Leitz Lexicon for planer and profile knives.

How it is priced

The blank is matched from the stock you hold, by family, material and size.

What it produces

• Customer drawing
• Knife DXF with its section
• Cutting list
• Spec sheet
• STEP, STL and GLB

Exports offers a customer drawing, a specification and quote PDF, a cutting list CSV, a DXF, an STL, a GLB and a STEP file.

From a wizard

The answer of the machine knife wizard opens here with the family, the application, the material and the angles it found. The sizes still come from the machine or the drawing.

It hands nothing over for a razor blade or for a material and process no published source connects.

What it does not make yet

The workbench and the specification sheet state its scope in these words: "This module draws the knife from the values given, checks that it can be ground as stated and against the published figures it holds, takes off the blank and the counted work and prices them from modelled rates. It does not know your machine: the length, width, thickness and holes of a straight knife open on starting values and must come from the machine, the old knife or the drawing. It does not state tolerances, a coating's thickness, a dished knife's curve or a crush cut knife's edge radius, and it does not certify a knife for a machine or a speed."

• Inlaid, tipped and insert construction on a straight knife and a carbide edge on a circular knife: carbide is drawn as one piece.
• Asymmetrical, hollow ground and convex bevels: the nearest flat bevel is drawn.
• Grooved bottom knives and perforating or toothed circular knives.
• Holes in more than one row or at uneven spacing.
• Serrated and perforating tooth forms and wave or zig-zag edges.
• Turnover knives and cassette or system planer knives, which are catalogue parts.
• Stainless and ceramic knives.

Edge straightness, flatness, parallelism and surface roughness are not values here. They go in the quote line's note in the customer's words.