Anyone used one, where from and are they any good?
The story so far in full...
So with the metal work required on my Discovery expanding every time I look at it I'm getting a bit fed up with cutting sheet metal.
At the start of the project I bought a sheet metal disc cutter from machine mart CAT CPS75. I wasn't particularly happy with it from the start the top knurled wheel which feeds the metal in toward the cutter frequently slipped and the only solution was to try and use your knee to help feed the sheet into the cutter. Not easy when your cutting from four feet away. Yesterday it failed to cut at all part way through a sheet just partly folding the metal not shearing, and what a sod to extract the damaged sheet.
Took it back to MM and to be fair they refunded without much quibble saying they'd had some faulty batches and the wheels were slightly out of line, which you could see when viewed from the rear. They offered me an upgrade to bench croppers / shears but these are only good for straight lines as I'm aware.
I looked around at various other options not convinced of the disc cutter concept and throatless shears seemed to fit the bill, cut upto 1.6 or 2mm sheet depending on model, minimum distortion of the sheet metal and capable of gentle curves.
So I checked some out at a local supplier, the quality seemed a bit dubious. There seemed to be a lot of slop in the pivots and the top blade didn't run close to the bottom. Maybe pulling over on the handle would help to close the gap whilst cutting, either that or adding washers to take up slack in pivots. For the money I would expect the machine to work out of the box.
Does anyone know where you can get a decent one for similar money. One I was looking at was ~£130 Or are their any alternative sheet metal cutters I overlooked?
The story so far in full...
So with the metal work required on my Discovery expanding every time I look at it I'm getting a bit fed up with cutting sheet metal.
At the start of the project I bought a sheet metal disc cutter from machine mart CAT CPS75. I wasn't particularly happy with it from the start the top knurled wheel which feeds the metal in toward the cutter frequently slipped and the only solution was to try and use your knee to help feed the sheet into the cutter. Not easy when your cutting from four feet away. Yesterday it failed to cut at all part way through a sheet just partly folding the metal not shearing, and what a sod to extract the damaged sheet.
Took it back to MM and to be fair they refunded without much quibble saying they'd had some faulty batches and the wheels were slightly out of line, which you could see when viewed from the rear. They offered me an upgrade to bench croppers / shears but these are only good for straight lines as I'm aware.
I looked around at various other options not convinced of the disc cutter concept and throatless shears seemed to fit the bill, cut upto 1.6 or 2mm sheet depending on model, minimum distortion of the sheet metal and capable of gentle curves.
So I checked some out at a local supplier, the quality seemed a bit dubious. There seemed to be a lot of slop in the pivots and the top blade didn't run close to the bottom. Maybe pulling over on the handle would help to close the gap whilst cutting, either that or adding washers to take up slack in pivots. For the money I would expect the machine to work out of the box.
Does anyone know where you can get a decent one for similar money. One I was looking at was ~£130 Or are their any alternative sheet metal cutters I overlooked?
