The Shear Hog is one of our favorite Tormach TTS tools for removing and roughing aluminum here at Saunders Machine Works. We use the Shear Hog on all of our Tormach machines, including our larger PCNC 1100 and the smaller PCNC 440.

Machinists are familiar with spot drills–they’re stub length and have few or no flutes.  These little drills are designed to be extremely rigid so that they can precisely spot a hole for a twist drill.  Maximum meat in the shank keeps them on target.  The goal is use the spot drill to make a little dimple in the work-piece that keeps the twist drill from walking so the hole winds up in the right place.

Let’s be honest with each other, we all love getting new tools. Getting your hands on a new saw or cutting tool or even an altimeter drives excitement and you instantly find yourself looking for anything that needs to be trimmed, cut, or measured. When you get an end mill that you’ve never used, before you lose yourself in tooling euphoria, do these three things to make your machining experience all that is can be.

Many know of John Saunders (aka NYC CNC) and John Grimsmo (of Grimsmo Knives) and the work that they have done with their Tormach machines. Now, we’re introducing Robert Cowan. With a background in engineering, Robert is involved in the maker community and has previously used TTS tools on his home-made CNC. Now, he has a PCNC 440, and we can’t wait to see what he does with it.

There are Tormach enthusiasts all over the Internet. From CNCzone.com to social media and YouTube – the community for personal CNC machines is growing faster than ever.

The Tormach Tooling System (TTS) was developed as an affordable, quick-change solution for small milling machines. Many machine tool companies have proprietary tooling lines that can cost upwards of four to six thousand dollars (beyond the machine purchase) – this has long been considered a significant barrier to truly affordable CNC tools.