Hi everyone, I'm just starting my CNC journey and want to produce shapes from double-wall (5mm/0.2") cardboard. From fairly lengthy research, I believe my best option to do this in a clean, repeatable, accurate way is with an oscillating tangential knife. The only show in town on this seems to be the EcoCam EOT-3. As a beginner in the UK, I'm drawn towards the Ooznest Workbee Z1+ as a starting point for a machine. This uses the Duet2 controller. What I'm not clear on is how realistic it is, as a genuine beginner without a technical background, to buy an Openbuilds-type machine and an EOT-3 and make them work together. There seems to be a genuine dearth of information on the EOT-3 online. I gather it needs use of a 4th axis to turn the knife blade, and I understand the Duet2 can support this, but I'm concerned about getting stuck early on and left with a £1400/$€1600 cutting block which I can't make work. I've reached out to Ooznest for guidance, but understandably been told they have no experience with the EOT-3 so can't help out. The only alternative to the EOT-3 seems to be a dragknife. This looks to have quite a few disadvantages vs the tangential knife in terms of accuracy, flexibility and quality of cut. But I'm not experienced here either, so perhaps there's an option here. Glad to be here!
As well as asking the experts here, can I suggest that you join the Facebook group linked below. There's a wealth of experience there with the Duet controller. Between us we can hopefully get you sorted. Alex. Log into Facebook | Facebook
Another option might be the Oscillating Tangential Knife (OTK-3) | Stepcraft, Inc. Somewhere here on the forum, back many years ago someone posted an oscillating cutter that was nothing more than a small high-speed motor with a flywheel connected to a piece of guitar wire running in a teflon tube that cut cardboard beautifully but for the life of me I can't find it.
Have you tried a small downcut 2 flute? I use 1mm and 0.8mm downcut 2 flute endmills on balsa cuts super clean. I could try some cardboard. Gary
My bad. Turns out he was cutting foam. Still might work for cardboard. Brushless Motor Foam Cutter and cutting sheet foam | OpenBuilds
Thanks everyone. @Gary Caruso, I'm looking to get a near-perfect crisp cut on the edge, so unfortunately I'm not sure a router bit is going to work with cardboard unfortunately, but thanks for the suggestion. I'm interested in the suggestion from @Rick 2.0 around Stepcraft, as they seem to have much more support documentation available for using their knife. Equally, I can't be sure but it looks like their knife may well be a down-specced version of the same EOT-3. The design looks extremely close and both are labelled as made in Germany. Do you think I could easily use the Stepcraft cutter with an Ooznest machine? The Stepcraft knife claims to need UCCNC or the full version of WinPC-NC, so I'm not clear how easily adaptable this would be to the default Ooznest set-up. Any chance it's a plug and play? Stepcraft unfortunately don't offer machine beds as big as Ooznest at a comparable price-point, so I think I'll need to stay with Ooznest for the main machine.
