Big things, small packages

The subject of cutting and routing tools may not sound ultra-sexy on the face of it. Ok it is not sexy at all, but please bear with me dear reader, because pulling back the covers on this sector has opened my eyes to both a hot-bed of fierce competition, and also impressive technological development.

Milling, engraving, deburring, chamfering, countersinking, polishing, thread cutting, drilling, and cutting are just a selection of the individual application areas, each of which have hundreds of individual tools to choose from. For instance, you are starting a job that requires the use of reinforced plastics. I have the right tool for that, you may think, but what about when the substrate starts to melt and adhere to the cutter on your second batch because it is overheating. Well, in just one minute example, step in CCDia FiberSpeed from German-based VHF Camfacture AG, which has a diamond coating and application temperature north of 700°C. For those that use routers and cutters as part of their everyday production requirements, they will no doubt have a fair schooling in the ins and outs of this sector. But after a fair amount of research and the last few years of talking to developers at trade shows and press events there are some clear trends taking this sector’s kit to new heights. 

Indeed, the burgeoning range of sign-making materials, the increasing speed and accuracy of CNC cutters and routers, as well as advances in areas such as carbide manufacture are all contributing to create tools that suit very specific applications and could make a very big difference to your productivity and efficiency.

“What is partly driving this sector is the continual development of new materials and product applications,” says Complete CNC Solutions managing director, Julian Sage.

He continues: “If for example someone came along with a board made from two paper-boards sandwiching latticed PVC, then cutting through that would require very specific tooling. But further to this trend is simply the constant pursuit of both perfection and durability from tooling, but at a price that customers are willing to pay.

“Someone might be able to develop the most amazing cutter in the world, but if it will only do six boards before it starts to decay then it is good to no one. So it is always a compromise of having something that will thunder through resistant materials, and yet produce a high quality finish. I am proud to say that I think we source the technology that has made some very big advances in achieving this fine balancing act.”



Increasingly a focus of development for cutting and routing tools has been not only this balancing act, but the ability to cut and finish substrates such as acrylic in one operation using coatings such as Tinalox SN2—saving the end-user time by removing the polishing stage of the finishing process. Big advances are also being made in what are described as ‘nano’ engravers, that can create much higher levels of finished quality on substrates such as stainless steel, by using very high grades of tungsten carbide with a coating that is only 5 microns thick.



Sage continues: “We have solid carbide single flute tools that really do achieve a best-in-class finish. This is achieved by tailoring them precisely for the job in hand. So for example reducing the size to minimise tool chattering.”

Mirror worlds

Another key trend that is working to shape this sector’s development is the mirror developments in the sister sector of wide-format flatbed printing. This is primarily because the rapid growth in this sector, and the ability to print directly to an exotic array of substrates from glass to solid wood panels has made life very interesting for the tool manufacturers.

“When a sign-maker decides they want to bring print finishing in-house it is very easy to make a decision based solely on your present day needs,” continues Complete CNC’s Sage, adding: “So they start off thinking they just want to cut light-weight rigid sheets, but quickly realise that the demand is out there for products that require a more robust and heavy-duty solution. Another factor is that a cutter is often only as good as its waste clearance system, so bear this in mind.

“The fact that there is now a very well established and growing market where sign-makers are printing direct to substrate, and then wanting to cut out that image with perfect registration and very little or no finishing has been a huge influence on the development and selection of our own tooling portfolio.”

Looking at Complete CNC Solutions portfolio, it also indicates another key trend in this field. Indeed, it has good quality cutters that retail for about £20, but it also has tools that retail for £500. This huge disparity is because their ultra-high quality and durable tools are made to make the most of the precision capabilities of technology such as its Protek CNC systems, and can reportedly provide a finish time after time, on an industrial scale, which require zero secondary finishing. If you are heavily involved in this sector, then it would seem that the extra magnitude of cost should pay for itself very quickly.

Avoid a weak link

So, for such a small and apparently simple-looking component, a router bit or cutter plays a key role in the overall performance of the routing system in which it is installed. And poorly produced cutters negatively impact even the best routing systems’ productivity, their output quality, and both the precision and finish of the output they produce.

“Since the economy has grown and is now stabilising, sign-makers are starting to invest in high quality routing machines from the likes of Konsburg, Zünd, and AG/CAD. Until this growth, many manufacturers were investing in low-quality routing machines from emerging economies and these machines are recognised for poor rigidity and performance,” explains Sally Hunt, technical sales manager at Industrial Tooling Corporation.

She continues: “This has an impact on the respective cutting tools and machining conditions. Now the industry is stable enough to re-invest in high quality plants, we are noticing more manufacturers purchasing high-quality routing tools and in particular our balanced line of routing tools that are the ideal compliment for machines with high frequency spindles that operate at high cutting speeds.”

This is a point that Complete CNC Solutions Sage picks up on. He advises in addition that despite being made, typically, from solid tungsten carbide, a very hard material with little evident ‘give’, common small diameter cutters are as not absolutely stiff. For this reason, it is best to use the shortest cutter possible to complete the job being produced and so minimising longer cutters’ tendency to ‘chatter’ and leave a less than perfect edge. Long cutters, when pressed by higher feed rates or deeper passes, are also much more likely to break, often resulting is lost materials and consequently costly waste.

Cutter selection is usually driven by an interplay of factors, says Sage. These include the type of material being cut, the nature and size of the subject being produced and often the material’s thickness. Small-sized letters for example are best cut with cutters of a small diameter. Larger cutters leave evidence of their use in the form of larger radii on the inside corners of output which then have to be filed by hand to remove them. Smaller cutters leave correspondingly smaller radii which can be left untouched. Most modern routing systems will automatically radius the corresponding aperture cut so that shapes can be inlaid without further manual processes.


ITC’s Hunt continues, picking up on the issue: “With a diverse line of high-end cutting tool solutions that are manufactured in the UK, ITC has always been at the forefront of cutting tool technology in the most technologically demanding industry sectors. We have encountered cutting challenges on all manner of materials in all industry sectors, so exotic substrates are part of our every-day business. Employing state-of-the-art machine tools to manufacture our cutting tools, we can create a tool geometry that will optimise cutting conditions on any exotic material. Our research and development team works tirelessly to continually improve the cutting performance of our routing tools.”



Indeed, over the last couple of years, ITC has been a key player in the market with its 2091 upcut/downcut series of tools, the ClearCut line, and more recently the balanced routing tools for high frequency (high speed) spindles. With all these brands it is an established and key market player and is now working with a Swiss manufacturer to supply the industry with knife tools.



Hunt adds: “At ITC, we pride ourselves on the quality of our routing tools, so when we got an opportunity to work with a high profile manufacturer of tangential blades and knife tools, we took it. The knife tools are a perfect compliment to our routing lines and they will enable us to provide our print and sign-making customers with a complete cutting tool solution.



“By adding a comprehensive line of high quality knife and plotting tools to the extensive range of ITC routing tools, we can supply our customer base with a technologically advanced solution to meet the diverse and often challenging needs of the market. The ITC product portfolio is manufactured in the UK and is fully supported by a technical engineering team that has worked with marquee brands in the aerospace, F1, and medical markets for decades to develop some of the most innovative cutting solutions in industry. When you buy a cutting tool from ITC, you are buying into a generation of technical excellence that is unsurpassed.”

Fine margins

These points from both Sage and Hunt also highlight another key issue that further impacts on the correct choice of tooling for specific tasks. Depending on the cutter type and the routable material it is cutting, cutters typically cut by removing material, in mechanical terms, by shaving it away at high speed or by chip breaking. The cutter’s design may leave the waste the cutting process produces in the ‘kerf’ or slot it is cutting, or it may remove the chips or swarf-like waste thanks to the helical design of its flute or flutes.

With the exception of some specialised and little-used cutter designs, cutting edges are broadly concentric with so-called ‘clearances’ ensuring the edge does its job in a matter analogous to a knife shaving or cutting. If an inaccurate grind during the cutter’s production has resulted in poor accuracy in this respect, the poor results produced can be heard even before they are seen.

A further issue in addition to manufacturing tolerances is the afore-mentioned impact of increasingly exotic substrates: “The choice of materials that has to be machined by sign-makers is getting bigger and bigger,” says Jörn Vogt, head of marketing at VHF Camfacture AG.



He continues: “In order to provide them with tools for all their applications, one has to offer milling cutters for machining workpieces from softer sorts of plastics up to stainless steel. However, it is necessary to offer both: tools which are designed for one special material—if plenty of this material has to be machined—as well as universal tools which are suitable for a broader range of materials. This is especially true for smaller sign-making companies which cannot keep a great stock of tools.”



Vogt also agrees with Sage when it comes to the impact of flatbed printers, as they have increased the range of materials being commonly used by sign-makers.


He continues: “So one can take the same tools for milling the printed plates and the plain materials. However, due to the use of digital flatbed printers, more and more sorts of cardboard will be printed and have to be cut afterwards. The CNC machines have to be equipped with appropriate cutting heads, and for these heads the appropriate knives are required. Especially making V-cuts in harder sorts of corrugated cardboard is quite challenging as they are rather abrasive and—in opposite to straight cuts—one cannot work with an oscillating knife here.”

O Factoid: Carbide tools maintain a sharp cutting edge when compared to alternatives and produce a better finish, while their temperature resistance allows for faster machining. The material is a metal matrix composite where tungsten carbide particles are the aggregate and metallic cobalt serves as the matrix. O

Looking across VHF’s extensive range, featuring 1,000 different cutting-edge geometries, there is a key new tool which stands out and has been designed specifically with the sign-making sector in mind. It is a double toothed torus cutter for stainless steel. With its small edge radius its wear resistance is increased, this reportedly results in a very good surface quality. And its extra short cutting edge facilitates a higher level of stiffness and thus finish quality.



Cut out the crap

Looking back across the advice from the experts, with the correct cutter selection from a quality range, it is possible with sign-making staples such as acrylic, to produce output needing little or no manual finishing to produce a visually attractive edge. Poorly made or worn cutters on the other hand yield output that may occupy an operator for hours with post-cutting processes just to bring a result up to marketable standard.



The economics of using cheap cutters just do not hold up, particularly when good ones could hardly be described as expensive. Indeed, I remember talking to the enigmatic Ulf Helliksen of Crown Norge at FESPA 2014, who concisely stated that the best suppliers on the market do not need to market themselves very much because, ‘the quality of the products speak for themselves.’

Practically any material of use in manufacturing signs and displays can be processed by routing. Steels may be more challenging than plastics, wood, and metals such as aluminium and brass, but can be cut with a correctly equipped and setup system capable of holding the work and dealing with the waste. Engineered materials such as aluminium-bonded panels are also easily routed using the right cutter and yield exceptional results. Indeed, one of the many facets of routing is the sheer number of materials that the process can benefit.


What is perhaps vital to realise is that the humble tool itself may be a much less expensive component than the system in which it is installed or the material it is tasked with cutting. But, and it is a big one, a poorly specified cutter is capable of wrecking expensive materials. Indeed in the words of Complete CNC’s Sage: “They can make what could be an investment costing tens of thousands of pounds produce results that look as though they have be hacked out with a handsaw.”

Offer: 50 free solid carbide cutters for SignLink readers

Complete CNC Solutions managing director, Julian Sage, says he is prepared to back up his claims in regards to the quality and durability of his products by offering 50 lucky SignLink readers a free cutter in an exclusive give-away. 

In an interview with editor Brendan Perring he explained the offer: “Complete CNC Solutions’ range of single-flute solid carbide cutters is designed and manufactured to deliver superior quality finished edges, long life at maximum performance levels, and maximum yields before replacement. Designed expressly with profiling and finishing needs in sign and display applications, the cutters offer measurable improvement in quality and output.



“If you would like to put those claims to the test at no cost to yourself, act quickly. Complete CNC Solutions is offering a choice of a free 3mm, 4mm, or 6mm trial single flute cutter to the first fifty companies who email info@completecnc.co.uk and simply ask for one!”

Sage adds: “Be sure to include in your mail your company name, its address, an email contact, and the type and age of the router the free cutter will be used in and in particular the collet size. Only one cutter per comp-any/address and the quantity is limited so it is a first come and first served offer. 

“We would really appreciate some feedback from those who get to try the free cutter and points out that, to get the great results the cutter is designed to give, the collet and spindle should be in good condition.”


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