M.B. Naegle
Diamond
- Joined
- Feb 7, 2011
- Location
- Conroe, TX USA
Many of our customers use hydraulic cut-out machines that use steel-rule-dies (like cookie cutters) to cut through leather and other materials into big red or white plastic cutting pads that I believe are polypropylene. When the surface gets too cut up, you either replace the pad or if it's thick enough you can surface it down and keep using it. We used to offer that resurfacing service as we had a special machine for cutting the pads down. It had a carbide insert milling head like a face mill that was attached directly to a motor on an articulated arm that the operator could swing around to hit the whole surface and then adjust the arm down to cut more. It took forever and we were losing money (in time) as new pads were not that expensive, but an ex-employee got ham-fisted tightening a pad down and broke the machines cast iron frame. We could have fixed it but took it as a sign, scrapped the machine and discontinued the service until we could find a more economical way to do it.
I've been looking at Plainers, but was recently fixing up an old 6" Oliver Jointer of ours and am thinking that they might do the job too. We would need something with a cutting surface around 24" wide, as most of the pads ar 18 to 20 inches wide and are anywhere from 3 ft. to 6 ft. long. The pads are 1 to 2 inches thick, but often are glued down to big maple cutting blocks or plywood pads, so they'll be anywhere from 1 to 6 inches thick. We would only be cutting 1/8" to 1/4" down in as many passes as it would take. Our old cutter used to have a HSS cutting head, but we switched to the carbide head as we had a few pads with bits of broken dies embedded in them, which were a pain to find.
So I guess my question is could a 24" Plainer or Jointer handle cutting these big plastic pads? Would there be any risk of kick back? I think the pads weigh from 20 to 70 lbs. My understanding is that a Plainer will make them thinner but not fix any bow in the surface, but are somewhat automatically fed, while a Jointer is simpler and will be all hand fed, but will cut out any bow in the pads in addition to making them thinner.
What What should I look for in a machine? I'm used to building spare parts so I'm inclined to look for old American Iron. I suspect that both would be fairly loud and will require some level of debris removal. Our old machine just pushed all the shavings to the floor where they would be swept up between shifts (and it made a lot of shavings).
I've been looking at Plainers, but was recently fixing up an old 6" Oliver Jointer of ours and am thinking that they might do the job too. We would need something with a cutting surface around 24" wide, as most of the pads ar 18 to 20 inches wide and are anywhere from 3 ft. to 6 ft. long. The pads are 1 to 2 inches thick, but often are glued down to big maple cutting blocks or plywood pads, so they'll be anywhere from 1 to 6 inches thick. We would only be cutting 1/8" to 1/4" down in as many passes as it would take. Our old cutter used to have a HSS cutting head, but we switched to the carbide head as we had a few pads with bits of broken dies embedded in them, which were a pain to find.
So I guess my question is could a 24" Plainer or Jointer handle cutting these big plastic pads? Would there be any risk of kick back? I think the pads weigh from 20 to 70 lbs. My understanding is that a Plainer will make them thinner but not fix any bow in the surface, but are somewhat automatically fed, while a Jointer is simpler and will be all hand fed, but will cut out any bow in the pads in addition to making them thinner.
What What should I look for in a machine? I'm used to building spare parts so I'm inclined to look for old American Iron. I suspect that both would be fairly loud and will require some level of debris removal. Our old machine just pushed all the shavings to the floor where they would be swept up between shifts (and it made a lot of shavings).