CnC Saw for routing sinks?

[lupo191]

Ok my first post, here we go ........

I have as small shop in NW England and am looking to upgrade my kit to digital. I realise this subject has been covered many times before so please bare with me.

As usual I am restricted by budget and space but As I am not looking to take on the World and happy at a maximum of say 10 kitchens a week.

I am considering various options and leaning towards a CnC saw and retaining my manual Kolb work centre.

Question I want to ask is how effective is a CnC saw at cutting out sink bowls? I ve seen several that have the option of a 1/2" router attachment but are they just for occasional use or will they work the same as CnC work centre?

Any recommendations on a particular make of saw that would perform this job would be welcome - but remember it would have to be available in UK

Cheers
Paul

[Alex DiPietro]

Hi Paul,

We cut every sink on our cnc saw for about 2 years. For us it was a great stepping stone into full digital production. However there are some limitations.

1. The bottom edge on a lot of materials blows out. So you either have to round the bottom edge or use some glue to fix it. For me the advantages of automation outweighed the disadvantage of the bottom edge.

2. Your saw may spend more time cutting sinks than cutting slabs. So depending on how many slabs you have to cut, it can turn into a real bottle neck. We cut a lot of stuff other than kitchens, and the problem is that when your saw is tied up milling sinks, sometimes you have to wait 45 minutes just to trim a 1/4" of another piece. This was our biggest obstacle.

Since recently buying a router we cut very few sinks on our saw. The router has freed up our saw tremendously. At two decent sized kitchens a day, I'd say that's the max you could really entertain without falling behind and milling at the saw. Any more than that and it may be overwhelming. Good luck!

[lupo191]

Thanks Alex

Yes I agree two machines solves the problem but would break the bank!

Did you cut any sinks on Dekton using the saw and if so how clean was the cut? Dekton is one factor in upgrading as I am struggling to route using our Kolb machine

[Alex DiPietro]

we never tried dekton specific tools but the pressure from incremental on dekton always resulted in pretty terrible cuts front the finger bit...

[THarper]

I too am a single machine shop. We cut all of our sinks on our cnc saw. A few things to consider

1. Tool change. You cant run a router bit with the saw blade on the saw do to RPM's. If changing the tool is a pain then this will be frustrating. Our saw has an iso cone and is quick release. Changing from cutting to milling takes us about 5 minutes.

2. We generally cut the sink first so we can clamp the slab at the edges. If you cut and then try to rout a sink it may move. Keep in mind that I am cutting all in one step with a finger bit. I occasionally use a mill to work inside/outside corners but milling sinks incrementally takes way to long. I can generally cut a sink in about 14 minutes depending on the material.

3. Yes we can rout Dekton sinks on the machine. Again its a learning curve. When the finger bit gets to the end of the cut it wants to snap the sink hole and occasionally chips into the material side. We cut little wooden blocks and shim the sink cut as it gets to the end to prevent it from moving. The quality of the cut is really good with a new finger bit however as the finger bit wears the cut quality suffers. Part of life though.

Thanks and good luck.

[lupo191]

I too am a single machine shop. We cut all of our sinks on our cnc saw. A few things to consider

1. Tool change. You cant run a router bit with the saw blade on the saw do to RPM's. If changing the tool is a pain then this will be frustrating. Our saw has an iso cone and is quick release. Changing from cutting to milling takes us about 5 minutes.

2. We generally cut the sink first so we can clamp the slab at the edges. If you cut and then try to rout a sink it may move. Keep in mind that I am cutting all in one step with a finger bit. I occasionally use a mill to work inside/outside corners but milling sinks incrementally takes way to long. I can generally cut a sink in about 14 minutes depending on the material.

3. Yes we can rout Dekton sinks on the machine. Again its a learning curve. When the finger bit gets to the end of the cut it wants to snap the sink hole and occasionally chips into the material side. We cut little wooden blocks and shim the sink cut as it gets to the end to prevent it from moving. The quality of the cut is really good with a new finger bit however as the finger bit wears the cut quality suffers. Part of life though.

Thanks and good luck.
[

Thank you for the info
What saw are you running?
What is the bed made of and do you cut into it?
Dekton is a pain in the arse/ass!
Cheers
Paul

[deacdon]

I too am a single machine shop. We cut all of our sinks on our cnc saw. A few things to consider

1. Tool change. You cant run a router bit with the saw blade on the saw do to RPM's. If changing the tool is a pain then this will be frustrating. Our saw has an iso cone and is quick release. Changing from cutting to milling takes us about 5 minutes.

2. We generally cut the sink first so we can clamp the slab at the edges. If you cut and then try to rout a sink it may move. Keep in mind that I am cutting all in one step with a finger bit. I occasionally use a mill to work inside/outside corners but milling sinks incrementally takes way to long. I can generally cut a sink in about 14 minutes depending on the material.

3. Yes we can rout Dekton sinks on the machine. Again its a learning curve. When the finger bit gets to the end of the cut it wants to snap the sink hole and occasionally chips into the material side. We cut little wooden blocks and shim the sink cut as it gets to the end to prevent it from moving. The quality of the cut is really good with a new finger bit however as the finger bit wears the cut quality suffers. Part of life though.

Thanks and good luck.
[

There are a number of saws (competitors of ours) who do not recommend or allow the running of the step cutting bit along with the saw. However, in the case of Donatoni, we are able to run both the blade and step cutting bit at the same time, therefore, no time is required for adding or removing the tools. This is a benefit of the Donatoni saw as you are able to run the machine in automatic from start to finish.

Cutting the sinks first is the best plan as you have the most mass and greatly diminishes the likelihood of the piece moving. Properly set up, the Donatoni Jet can mill the corners in about 2-1/2 minutes depending upon material.

[THarper]

We run a Denver 5 AXIS Technika. Our bed is treated 2x6. We do cut about 1mm into the bed most of the time.

The purpose of not having the blade on has nothing to do with the saw itself. The blades are rated for a max RPM of around 2500. The router bit is between 4800 - 6000 depending on the bit.

If you run your router with the blade on I would definitely make sure you purchase the enclosure with the saw. Or get some really good safety glasses and a bullet proof vest.

[Alex DiPietro]

We always left the blade on, facing backwards when running the milling bits. at least a thousand sinks cut, no problems..

[BReynolds]

We always left the blade on, facing backwards when running the milling bits. at least a thousand sinks cut, no problems..

x2 -16" blade. Have spun an 18" that fast but I didn't like it, we never take the blade off- have been cutting sinks for about 2 years on the saw.

[Alex DiPietro]

we use 20" blades never had a problem

[Reddick Marble]

I bought a Sasso K600 in January of last year and put it into operation in April of last year. With that being said we have cut every sink hole for the last year on the saw using an incremental bit. We have the same problems as Alex with the blowouts on the bottom edge but its worth it in my opinion. It takes us about 55 minutes for a 60/40 sink and approx 42 min for a oval sink. If you find the right sinks you can cut the straight sections and only mill the corners .... speeds up time.

Regardless I wouldn't go back to cutting sinks by hand unless I had no choice.

[Alex DiPietro]

Your times for milling the sinks is way too long. An oval should take 10mins. Maybe 15mins on a chippy material... go much, much, much faster. We could cut 8 sinks easily in a days worth of slabs.

[Reddick Marble]

Alex what saw do you run? What type of incremental bit are you using? What parameters are you running the bit at?

[Alex DiPietro]

We have an omag area 5 saw. We used the diamant boart finger bits. 4500rpm maybe 100ipm (we dial down probably more like 60-70 but we adjust for material) and we took .04" per pass in spiral pattern.

[pwukusick]

We also have an Omag Area 5 saw, but with an aluminum table and vacuum pods. We mill our granite and marble sinks on pods with a regular router bit and the blade off. We drill the faucet holes and use a profile wheel to roundover the top edge all in the same setup. We can set up and run at least a couple vanities at a time (the only limiter is the number of pods we have).
With this setup you can cut virtually any shape you want.

[Alex DiPietro]

Pete does yours have the tool changer?

[pwukusick]

No Alex, it's manual tool change.

[alexhinkle42]

Honestly northwoods has a fabcenter all around great CNC Alex HINKLE Busenbark Granite CNC Programmer Operator

[Thibaut_NA]

Dear Paul,

We are at Thibaut manufacturing what I think is the ultimate Countertops manufacturing Machine.

It is a CNC Bridge Saw, but has also a tool to cut sink as a CNC router and as well a Jig Saw for 90 degrees inside angle cut as for the square/rectangular sink hole. So no need for many machines so reduce your investment. It is perfect for your 10 counters a week.

This is very unique to Thibaut Machine. look at the following video link.TC600

Claude
Thibaut North America
Internal Support Engineer
844 429 9993
cnoel@thibautna.com