Is a tangential oscillation knife possible with Elite forman?

Have a Elite Foreman on order, found a product that would work best with a oscillating knife and see some folks have poked at the idea of adding a tangential oscillating knife. It seems that the masso has a 5th axis to control the knife, and masso seems to support it. Is anyone more current on the possibilities than the dec/2020 threads? Im not averse to doing the hardware just wanted to make sure that the base configuration could handle it electrically/programatically.

1 Like

I designed a built a tangential knife a long time ago to use with my Onefinity and Masso. The only software that had a PP that generated the code for controlling the A axis was SheetCam. It worked in my testing. I do not know of any other software providers that have this. Vectric has a gadget, but I believe it is for a drag knife, not control of a tangential knife/4th axis.

I have plans to build an oscillating version, so I too will need to find a CAM software that can do this - for now I think it is SheetCam.

Have you chosen a knife yet?

1 Like

Still trying to find what options are available in hardware. Only found 2 viable candidates. I’m2 months minimum till the machine is here so I have time.

Being unsure of available and tested software options, besides SheetCam, is what kept me from pursuing the purchase of an oscillating tangential knife early on - those I liked unfortunately were not inexpensive.

It looks like we are on the same adventure! Have you made any progress? I’m 100% new to CNC, but I have some experience with 3D printing. Plenty of overlap but I’m stumbling a lot as I try to understand many things.

I’m guessing the 2 options you are looking at are the EOT-3 and the OTK-3? The OTK-3 looks like it’s using a D-sub connector, so I’m not sure how it would interface. Similar situation with the EOT-3 and some circular 7-pin connectors :frowning:

It looks like they both have a 43mm mounting neck, though it looks like they both clamp very close to the bottom of the attachment. The custom clamp that would be required to mount it on the Foreman would need to hang lower on the carriage than the standard clamp, since the standard clamp relies on the spindle to protrude far below the clamp. I see a thread about it here. Luckily this application, at least for me (I plan to cut cardboard/chipboard), shouldn’t put a huge load on the clamp, so I’ll be modeling and 3D printing one that should hold up well.

It looks like between the 4th (B) and 5th (A) axis, only the 5th is free, so the knife orientation would have to be controlled by this. (For reference, the 4th axis output is paired with the Y axis, so each motor gets an output.)

In my searching on here, I see @TMToronto comments as the best source of info, though it doesn’t look like their endeavors were simple, and that was without oscillation.