I lost one of my teeth :\

[WOT]

Somehow, my quite sharp cutting wheel caught the blank, completely mangled the blank, stalled the motor tripping the breaker at the back and chipped one of the teeth on the cutting wheel.

Why did this happen? I was not trying to do anything reckless, like slamming the carrier up, trying to cut steel or anything out of ordinary. I was slowly letting it touch the blank, as usual, then it went BANG!, the blank bent down right at where the vise grip is holding it bringing the 1/4 hp motor to an instant halt and tripping the safety switch in the rear of the machine.




Would the cutting will catch another blank at the missing spot?

[Eyes_Only]

My FB machine did a similar thing a while ago too. I was cutting a CG1 key blank for one of the lessons of the FB course when the cutter snagged the blank and ripped it out of the vise. This only happens when I am cutting this key blank so I stopped using it after I finished my lesson. My cutting wheel looks fine though.

[cjames73]

i thought you meant one of your teeth

i'm no locksmith but i used to work in a wood workshop and if any saw teeth chipped like that the blade would not be used again (unless all the other teeth were reground).
the blade would become unbalanced and will also catch on whatever your cutting.

maybe the tooth had a stress fracture before you started cutting this key.
always check the teeth for cracks/chips before cutting in future, just in case...

[WOT]

i thought you meant one of your teeth

i'm no locksmith but i used to work in a wood workshop and if any saw teeth chipped like that the blade would not be used again (unless all the other teeth were reground).
the blade would become unbalanced and will also catch on whatever your cutting.

maybe the tooth had a stress fracture before you started cutting this key.
always check the teeth for cracks/chips before cutting in future, just in case...

This blade cost about $100

[lunchb0x]

our wheel at work always has a couple off teeth missing, if we replaced it every time it had a chip we would be replacing it every couple of weeks, it works good until 2 to 3 teeth next to each other are broken

[Krypos]

i dont know much about this kind of thing.... key machines that is.

but i do know that you are gonna want to inspect that blade VERY well. if there are teeth shooting off like that, then a) that incident may have caused other fractures/etc or b) there may already have been fractures prior and thats why it did that.

check it well, last thing anyone would want is something like that ripping apart and flying in your noggin.

which i have seen videos of...... i saw a video once of a guy using an angle grinder or something of the sort, and the blade just tearing apart and flying into peoples heads.

just make sure to check everything is all im saying.

[Raccoon]

i saw a video once of a guy using an angle grinder or something of the sort, and the blade just tearing apart and flying into peoples heads.

LINK!!1

[Eyes_Only]

This is why I wear safety glasses when I'm cutting keys. It may sound stupid and paranoid but I don't want to ruin locksports for myself by losing an eye.

[Krypos]

LINK!!1

if i had one i would have posted it the first time around you sicko!

lol.

i think i saw it at school actually, as i had been talking to my architecture teacher (who also does construction/woodworking/shop) and he showed it to me.

it was nasty.

[WOT]

This is why I wear safety glasses when I'm cutting keys. It may sound stupid and paranoid but I don't want to ruin locksports for myself by losing an eye.

I do too. I've gotten brass powder into my eyes a few times. Since then, always goggles.

[Shrub]

It happens unfortunatley, sometimes its a fault in the material and others a hardening issue from when made or ground,

Resharpened blades can do this more often than new blades i guess depending if the blade was resharpend on a wednesday or friday afternoon,

The wheel will be totally fine with a few teeth missing if need be but if they start gogin nxt to each other ie leaving spaces with no teeth then you must change the blade,

If its a new blade see about having it replaced under warrentry,

It could be that your useing too much pressure when cutting indeed a key grabbing and flipping out would tend to lead to that assumption but as its also happened to me many times before it of course could be nothing to do with it,


Always wera eye protection and give the machine a rest between batches of keys, if your cutting steel keys one after anther your gogin to get the blade too hot and this sort of faliure can be the result,

You will find the teeth are the hard part with the rest of the blade unhardened or at least to the saem rokwell as the tips,

[raimundo]

when you say that you werent cutting steel, have you ever cut steel with it or rammed it into the vicejaw? this can make a defect that will later turn to a fracture, has anyone else ever used your machine, especially complete newbies? it may have been abused and you were unaware of it.

the teeth on these things are hardened, and this makes them brittle, then they are supposedly 'drawn' which is a tempering process to relieve some of the stress by keeping it at 800 to a 1000 degrees for a few hours, if this process is speeded up it may have left the teeth brittle.

when you heat a small piece of metal, it can become hot very quickly, possibly the tooth being a very small piece at the tip, was kept too hot while the rest was drawn back from the brittle hardness.

fractures in hard metal start at a defect, a weakness, like a small cut, that yours broke on brass suggests that the defect was developing for some time and finally over stressed on a soft metal. there is no way the brass did this unless the alloy had some unknown carbide in it, recycled metals are not really clean alloys.

[Eyes_Only]

What kind of key machine was it? You stated that the cutter cost you $100 so I am guessing it was not the FB Model 200.

[WOT]

What kind of key machine was it? You stated that the cutter cost you $100 so I am guessing it was not the FB Model 200.

Ilco Unican 025 which has a PX-23MC wheel.