New Guy here- I’m trying to decide on buying a 770M or go a different direction?

[Boomer1971]

First off, I want to say hello to everyone. I’ve watched and read posts for quite awhile and I feel like you guys are the best source I’ve come across to answer a few questions I have.

I’m trying to make a decision on what direction I need to go. A little background on my situation is as follows. I’ve worked my way back from a heat stroke and lower back fusions. I’m not 100% back but I’m back enough to run a machine and work on starting a business. I want to make custom folders. So I need a machine that can meet the tolerances and repeatability to produce serveral hundred of each part needed. I know John Grimsmo started with Tormach and was a sponsor. So I don’t know if he had to throw a lot of parts away or hand finish them if they weren’t in tolerance. I just want to know if I go with Tormach will I get a machine that is capable of the job or will it not live up to the task. I’ve got a budget of $15,000 and I’m looking at the 770M or is there another direction that might work better.

Im hoping everyone here can share their opinions (negative and positive) and help me make an educated decision before I tie my money up in a machine that’s not capable of the job that I need. All comments are appreciated and I’ll try to respond back as soon as I can. Thanks and I appreciate everyone’s time in answering my questions.

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[footpetaljones]

What are your tolerances? Material type? Part size? How quickly do you need your parts made?

[Steve Seebold]

A picture of what you’re trying to do would be helpful.

[Boomer1971]

Hey Steve, thanks for the reply. I want to be able to produce various types of folding knives. Something like a Benchmade brand knife would be an example of the quality. You have the scales, clip, liners, blade and various screws. Of course there are other parts such as bolsters, springs and other small internals. It’s late so I took a few pics, sorry it’s not totally broken down.

footpetaljones- I would be cutting various steels, titanium, carbon fiber, stone, cooper, micarta, wood. As far as time goes, I’m giving myself a year for designing my prototypes, getting the mill and everything lined out. I’m going to reach out to several locations locally (Houston area) where I can display and sell, build a web presence and also attempt to crowdfunding my knives. If the crowdfunding is successful I would be looking at three hundred knives in two to three months.

[Advil]

Have you followed Grimsmo's videos from the beginning? Many of those parts CAN be made on a Tormach and he certainly did, but hundreds of knives? And there's ALWAYS hand finishing or tumbling or SOMETHING if you are making a part that needs to be pretty almost no matter what machine you make it on.

This is tough. As Grimsmo discovered, a lathe is more suited for many of those small round parts. Unless you are making $500 knives like John and his brother, you aren't going to make your own screws.

Let's try a realistic approach. If you don't have a major machining and CAD/CAM background, in one year of pretty intensive learning you'd be lucky to be able to match one of those Benchmade knives. Are you ok with that or do you expect to be making nicer pieces than those?

200-300 in 2-3 months... Ok, at $130 a piece like Benchmade's you'd gross enough to pay most of a small used HAAS off but you won't keep anything for yourself.

This is going to be a lot of work if you expect to jump in and actually make real money inside a year. You'll need to be ready to commit hundreds of hours to learning the basics of CAD/CAM and hundreds more in front of whatever machine you get actually using it and getting comfortable with not just first operations of parts, but making fixtures and holding tolerances and figuring out how to get to a finished piece repeatably. I find it fun as heck, but I work my day job to pay the bills and am lucky enough to have my mill there where I work to use during my down time.

I'm looking at needing to do up to 300 of just one stainless part with a few dimensions being pretty close tolerances on my 770 and it's not a trivial exercise, and that's with my learning the machine and making stuff in my spare time for the last 2 years.

I think your plan is doable, but have a financial backstop and be ready if it takes 2 years instead to get to where you can make 300 knives in a run. You've got to find a way to enjoy the journey or you will get frustrated early and not want to continue. Don't put yourself under time frame pressure when you don't even fully understand what you are getting into yet. Follow the dream, but be smart about it!

While I think a small VMC bigger than a 770 is more SUITED to making 300 knives worth of parts... if you aren't prepared to put a small HAAS to work immediately when it arrives you'd still be better off learning on a 770 and selling it and switching to the HAAS if or when you hit the wall on the 770's horsepower. The Tormach is much easier to purchase cash outright and it can just sit around if you aren't making anything today without having to worry about spindle down time and using it enough every day to pay the loan on a bigger machine.

[CadRhino]

Good advice, Anvil

If you have never worked cam & Cnc before start out with a Tormach to learn and make mistakes on.

If you have some experience, get a used inspected vmc.

It will put you light years ahead in production.

If Grimsmo can do it you can but he hustled and has a great YouTube personality to help bolster support. He also has a supportive wife and brother.

Have you followed Grimsmo's videos from the beginning? Many of those parts CAN be made on a Tormach and he certainly did, but hundreds of knives? And there's ALWAYS hand finishing or tumbling or SOMETHING if you are making a part that needs to be pretty almost no matter what machine you make it on.

This is tough. As Grimsmo discovered, a lathe is more suited for many of those small round parts. Unless you are making $500 knives like John and his brother, you aren't going to make your own screws.

Let's try a realistic approach. If you don't have a major machining and CAD/CAM background, in one year of pretty intensive learning you'd be lucky to be able to match one of those Benchmade knives. Are you ok with that or do you expect to be making nicer pieces than those?

200-300 in 2-3 months... Ok, at $130 a piece like Benchmade's you'd gross enough to pay most of a small used HAAS off but you won't keep anything for yourself.

This is going to be a lot of work if you expect to jump in and actually make real money inside a year. You'll need to be ready to commit hundreds of hours to learning the basics of CAD/CAM and hundreds more in front of whatever machine you get actually using it and getting comfortable with not just first operations of parts, but making fixtures and holding tolerances and figuring out how to get to a finished piece repeatably. I find it fun as heck, but I work my day job to pay the bills and am lucky enough to have my mill there where I work to use during my down time.

I'm looking at needing to do up to 300 of just one stainless part with a few dimensions being pretty close tolerances on my 770 and it's not a trivial exercise, and that's with my learning the machine and making stuff in my spare time for the last 2 years.

I think your plan is doable, but have a financial backstop and be ready if it takes 2 years instead to get to where you can make 300 knives in a run. You've got to find a way to enjoy the journey or you will get frustrated early and not want to continue. Don't put yourself under time frame pressure when you don't even fully understand what you are getting into yet. Follow the dream, but be smart about it!

While I think a small VMC bigger than a 770 is more SUITED to making 300 knives worth of parts... if you aren't prepared to put a small HAAS to work immediately when it arrives you'd still be better off learning on a 770 and selling it and switching to the HAAS if or when you hit the wall on the 770's horsepower. The Tormach is much easier to purchase cash outright and it can just sit around if you aren't making anything today without having to worry about spindle down time and using it enough every day to pay the loan on a bigger machine.

[Steve Seebold]

Why are you looking at the 770? The 770 had just come out when I bought my 1100

After I got my machine, I was really glad I went with the 1100. The second job I got was a fiber optic enclosure. It came to life as a 2 inch thick, 4 inch wide 10.5 inch long 11 pound chunk of 6061 aluminum plate.

When it was all was said and done, the part weighed 11 ounces. I delivered 5 parts per week and I got $575.00 per part. My customer ordered 75 pieces. The whole job was worth $43,125.00 and I cried all the way to the bank.

[Boomer1971]

Advil, I appreciate your reply and the time you took to answer some of my questions. I understand and have thought about many of the questions you’ve addressed in your reply. I’ll try to fill in some of the blanks that my original post didn’t, I think that might help others as well.

I touched on John’s use as an example of someone who has used a Tormach mill to accomplish something similar to what I would be doing. Yes, I have watched countless hours of his videos and the hard work he and his brother have done building his successful brand. I’m trying to get as many people as possible who are not sponsored by Tormach to weigh in on the questions put forth in my original post.

I totally agree with your statement regarding the lathe work that will be required. For the various fasteners used in the production of a folding knife I would farm that out or utilize readily available ones on the market.

Part of working my way back from the physical damage that I’ve endured, was going back to school and that’s when I was introduced to machining. I always wanted to learn but never had the chance, you know how busy work and family is. Anyway, my doctors thought it would be really therapeutic and it would help both mind and body. I was really fortunate to have an older teacher who was both a machinist and later an engineer for Ford Motors. He really took me under his wing, so to speak. I went through the entire program, both manual and CNC.
I got to work with both mills and lathes and later helped around the shop with new students. I also have a small Grizzly benchmill at home and have spent a lot of time in front of that machine and I also spend time on my Father in law’s full size mill and lathe that sits about a quarter of a mile down the road. If I go the Tormach route I’ll have to learn Fusion 360, I learned on Mastercam so I’ll need some time to learn that. That’s why I was giving myself a year’s amount of time to be able to dial everything in. So from an experience standpoint this is where I stand at this time.

From the passion side of things, I really love to work with metal. My short term memory problems just won’t let me return to my former occupation and to be honest, if it did I would still go in this direction. Fortunately, my wife is a nurse and will finish her nurse practitioner program in two years. So, I don’t have any financial pressure to produce in a year or really ever. I was a financial planner and had things set up for something like what I went through. I’ve been pretty lucky as far as that is concerned. I’m just capping things at $15,000 and keeping the wife in the understanding camp if things don’t work out the way I believe they can. So I wouldn’t be going into debt if I went with a new 770M.

As far as, the 300 knives in a 2-3 months timeframe goes, that would only need to happen if I could successfully pull off a crowdfunding project. The prototype would be made with the Tormach. Then I would definitely consider buying something geared towards making small close tolerances parts and lots of them. Otherwise. I’ll be making fewer knives that will fetch a higher price. The pics of my Benchmade were just an example of a knife because someone ask for a pic. My price point would definitely be higher than $130.00, I think John charges more than $900 per knife

Maybe, a better question to ask, considering your time and experience with your Tormach machines. If you found yourself with the opportunity to either provide the necessary parts for a contract or decide to get in the knife making business, how confident would you be that your Tormach was up to the task? Also, how happy are you with the quality and service that Tormach provides?

With that said, I really appreciate your questions Advil and I hope my answers clarify the picture I’m trying to paint. I’m still pretty slow in my typing skills and sometimes my wording comes out backwards in my sentence structure. So please forgive me if I don’t reply right away, it just takes me a little bit longer than it use to.

Again, thanks for your comments.

[kstrauss]

After I got my machine, I was really glad I went with the 1100. The second job I got was a fiber optic enclosure. It came to life as a 2 inch thick, 4 inch wide 10.5 inch long 11 pound chunk of 6061 aluminum plate.

You don't provide any details but that size part is within the work envelope of a 770 unless you need to work on the ends and lack a right angle head. Why was it important to have gotten a 1100 rather than a 770?

[Steve Seebold]

You don't provide any details but that size part is within the work envelope of a 770 unless you need to work on the ends and lack a right angle head. Why was it important to have gotten a 1100 rather than a 770?

I suggested the 1100 instead of the 770 because the 1100 has a lot more power.

[Boomer1971]

Steve- I’m going with the 770M for various reasons. The new 770M has the same horsepower as the older 1100CNC. Now if your talking about a new 1100M your right, it would have more power.

[jmosley]

I’ve had the 770 for two years and it’s been great with stainless 303, steel, aluminum and hardwoods.very repeatable and it’s nice to have been able to add the 4th axis. It did take me a year+ to really be able to begin to make things somewhat efficiently and develop a good sense for work holding small flat parts and best ways to register parts that need to flip(be cut on both sides. Once you have done enough different parts the recipes in fusion can be modified if you manage your tool library well. I learned a lot the first time I had to make 300 parts. The machine stays accurate if I run it all day then check a registration point l. It’s important to have the 10000 rpm spindle, the haimer, a very good vise, and the mitee bites , tapping head , lots of collet holders, a very good chuck with carbide bits.


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[Snecx]

Boomer1971,

If you plan on doing mainly framelock/linerlock knives, I think the 770 will be a pretty good choice. The higher RPM on the 770 will be very handy especially when you have do use very small endmills (typical for the lockbar cutout.) I don’t think material removal rate will be an issue because the parts are mostly very small. The new 770M has been upgraded to 1.5hp anyway so that’s really good.

However I think it will be very unrealistic to produce a few hundred knives on the Tormach (or even a bigger VMC) in a few months, because your bottlenecks will be elsewhere.

You may also find that the precision/accuracy of a Tormach right from factory may not be sufficient for the work that you intend to do, unless you spend some time getting the machine tuned up. Or come up with other strategies to go around the problems in this craft.

Just to put things into perspective, even Grimsmo can’t get the knives assemble perfectly right out of the Mori. He has the dual stop pin system in place just to deal with the lock, for good reasons.

At the end of the day, I do think the 770 fits this job very well, as long as the expectation is set correctly.

[LeeWay]

Realistically I would not go into crowd funding relying on a cnc mill to produce that amount of knives. There are many secondary steps.
It will take many more tools and machines to accomplish such a goal. For that reason, I would look at the Tormach as an R&D prototyping machine mainly. I would outsource the rest of the production run via RFQ. Maybe use the Tormach for part of the finish work.
There is also a pretty steep learning curve coming up with the correct recipes for blade tempering and sharpening. That is an art all to itself. Before any crowd funding is done, you need to lock that down and make sure you are capable of doing the finish blade work to produce a sharp durable knife blade. More than one would prove that it wasn't luck.
Start with low easy to reach personal goals. The more you know, the more realistic you next goals can be and the better product that you would be capable of producing.

[Steve Seebold]

For the kind of production you’re talking about, I hate to say it but I think a Tormach 770 is going to be the wrong machine. I would be looking at a Haas Mini 2 or a Haas TM-1P.

Yes, the Haas will cost more, but either of the machines I mentioned will run on single phase power so you could run them in your garage.

[coffeetek]

Suddenly everyone is making or wants to make knives. Its going to be harder and harder. Before making investment in machinery I would advise you to first research and develop your market. What worked for Grimsmo, worked for Grimsmo alone and only at that point in time. Its one time deal. You or anyone else are not going to be repeating that recipe.

Pay job shop to make you couple of knives to your design. Then try selling them, try Kickstarter campaign etc. If you can sell these and you can develop market, invest into machinery. This is a business route.

If you want to start as hobby, find this a fun and therapeutic, then get machine (I advise against Tormach) and work on it, but if it develops into the business it develops, if not you got your fun out of it. But this way you can't really count on it paying the bills soon.

Hope this helps.

[Steve Seebold]

Suddenly everyone is making or wants to make knives. Its going to be harder and harder. Before making investment in machinery I would advise you to first research and develop your market. What worked for Grimsmo, worked for Grimsmo alone and only at that point in time. Its one time deal. You or anyone else are not going to be repeating that recipe.

Pay job shop to make you couple of knives to your design. Then try selling them, try Kickstarter campaign etc. If you can sell these and you can develop market, invest into machinery. This is a business route.

If you want to start as hobby, find this a fun and therapeutic, then get machine (I advise against Tormach) and work on it, but if it develops into the business it develops, if not you got your fun out of it. But this way you can't really count on it paying the bills soon.

Hope this helps.

That’s some really good advice. I’d listen to what he has to say before you jump off the deep and go into massive debt.

[Steve Seebold]

Suddenly everyone is making or wants to make knives. Its going to be harder and harder. Before making investment in machinery I would advise you to first research and develop your market. What worked for Grimsmo, worked for Grimsmo alone and only at that point in time. Its one time deal. You or anyone else are not going to be repeating that recipe.

Pay job shop to make you couple of knives to your design. Then try selling them, try Kickstarter campaign etc. If you can sell these and you can develop market, invest into machinery. This is a business route.

If you want to start as hobby, find this a fun and therapeutic, then get machine (I advise against Tormach) and work on it, but if it develops into the business it develops, if not you got your fun out of it. But this way you can't really count on it paying the bills soon.

Hope this helps.

That’s some really good advice. I’d listen to what he has to say before you jump off the deep and go into massive debt.

[Boomer1971]

Snecx- I appreciate the comments and advice you’ve given. I will weigh your words accordingly and definitely consider them in my decision.

LeeWay- Thanks for the comments. I’ve made about a dozen knives by the stock reduction method over the last several years. One friction folder by a combination of my smaller mill and hand. Of course this just makes me a novice at best and I have a long way to go. With that being said, I appreciate your advice and will definitely use it when it comes to making a decision.

coffeetek- I have nothing but respect for John and his brother. My post is about the performance of Tormach mills. Please try to keep things geared towards answering that question.

JMosely- Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate your response. It’s what I’m looking for.

[motoeng]

Boomer - if you haven't read it yet, take a look at the following thread where I asked a similar question to yours, albeit with a different type of part. Could help you gain some more perspective.

https://www.cnczone.com/forums/torma...g-cad-cam.html