Drag Knife Suggestions

[Ronald Blue]

I'm looking at possibly getting a drag knife to cut out vinyl overlays, stencils, etc. Any suggestions on what to get and what to avoid? Is this the correct tool for what I want to do? I'm just thinking it could allow me to do some things with paint that would be a real challenge other wise. Any and all input welcome. Thanks in advance.

[Jim Becker]

Although I am yet to use it, I bought the Donek knife.

[Tony Leonard]

I have the Donek and it is a great tool for some things. I have not had great success when using it for thin materials though. What is thin? I'm talking about vinyl and stencil material. I just used the Donek for veneer the other day and it worked pretty well. I had to get very creative with tool paths for the pieces I was cutting because the corners were very small angles. I made a holder for the common Roland type knife that is used for thin materials. That has worked real well for vinyl, stencil material, etc. The other thing that is a big part of this is how to secure the material. I use low tach spray adhesive, tape, etc. I also built a very simple vac table that I use with a shop vac (for veneer).

There are several ideas for the Roland type knife and how to hold it on a CNC router. There is a company that sells a special holder (Widgetworksunlimited or something?) that is fairly expensive. I bought the cutter on eBay for ~$10.

This is the veneer inlay project - panels for doors.
IMG_5107 (Small).JPG

Well, I was trying to find a pic of the Roland cutter holder, but I can't find it. Anyway, I have used the Donek for veneer, cork, felt, and some other things I can't recall - oh cardboard and matt board. But when I tried it on vinyl, it just didn't work well for me. Seems like something I read on their site confirmed that the model I have is not really meant for thin stuff - it uses box cutter blades. Part of that is the minimum radius. I think they specify 1/16"? And most of my vinyl projects are small, so that's limiting.

This is a linear clock I made. The ruler made by applying the stencil material to the yellow paint, then cutting, weeding out the ticks and numbers, then spraying black.
20200112_155454 (Small).jpg

Sorry the pics are rotated! Not sure why.

[Ryan Williams]

I also have the Donek, and like the designer created it for I cut UHMW for snowboard and Ski bases. It works well once you have all the settings correct. I design in fusion 360 and use fusion for all my CNC work with the exception of the drag knife. I have to export as a dxf and use sheetcam with drag knife add on for creating the gcode for the knife.... really hoping fusion will add drag knife natively someday...

[Ronald Blue]

Thanks for the input everyone. I will likely grab a Donek in the near future. Just working on getting things how I want them plus make room for a 1000 or so bd feet of Ash I acquired recently.