on all orders over $150*
on all orders over $150*
If you own or looking at purchasing one of the 994 Laser Key Machines by Keyline, I want to show you the number one mistake that is made that will cost you $160 every time you make it. The 994 Laser Machine has been out for a while. It's a very stable machine. It's a very accurate machine with very simple prompts to follow to avoid breaking a bit. And for whatever reason, we don't like to follow those rules, or follow those steps, causing us a couple of dollars every time we made the mistake.
As a matter of fact, I personally have been on site at a customer's installing one of these machines, they're in a hurry, I'm in a hurry, right? They need to get to work, I need to get back to work. And I literally break two of these $160 cutter bits in a row and the manager of the operations like, "Hey PJ, so are we buying those replacement bits or you, you know?" And of course, I replaced them, it was a very expensive mistake and that's really what I want to go over in this video is I want to show you where the mistake happens, that makes people break those bits. This blog will help you avoid those mistakes. So let's go ahead and let me tell you what to do.
WHERE THE MISTAKE HAPPENS
Alright, so here is what a broken cutter bit looks like here. This one, this is a real OEM cutter that got broke on this machine here a while ago.
You're going to run into the problems when you're switching out the jaw and cutter between the A-jaw, which is like for high security keys, and the G-jaw or even the older F-jaw. So essentially, the G-jaw or F-jaw uses a 1.5-millimeter cutter and for edge style keys and A-jaw uses the 2.5-millimeter cutter.
SWITCHING THE JAWS ON THE 994 KEY CUTTING MACHINE
Right now, we have the A-Jaw on the 2.5-millimeter cutter and for high security and so I put in here just for H75 edge style key for this example works. Put it on the screen and you hit the next button to proceed into cutting. Alright, so it says, ‘Clamp the blank in the jaw and remove the tip stop well.’ Remember, we still have the old stuff on here and a lot of times people want to start moving stuff around. You don't want to do that yet, all you need to do is to hit the cut button.
Then it's going to tell us to remove the jaw as it says on the screen. So, we're going to flop this over here and we're going to remove the jaw. And that's all we're going to do then hit OK.
Now it says install jaw G, which is what I got right here. And that's what we will do. Now one quick, extra point pointer here is the tray for catching all the little key burr, sometimes the G-Jaw all get caught on it. So I just want to make sure you look back down here. Make sure it's all the way aligned on here when you do it. Make sure you do that. So once you got it there and installed the G-Jaw, we hit OK.
Now, it says please remove the cutter. We'll go ahead and take our cutter removal tool. Get it locked in here, just like that.
Then grab our Allen wrench, we're going to move it around until we find that hole right there and loosen it up a little bit.
Pull the old cutter out, that way it'll come out. Another little quick point here is that this plastic pressure holds the bit on here. So if that happens, put it back together.
THE MISTAKE
This is the exact moment where you're going to break a bit. Because you removed the cutter and I even still have the Allen wrench here and what guys want to do is they want to put the new cutter in but the problem with that is that the alignment spot right here on the jaw right here, that is where the cutter drops down to find the proper depth.
And so this what happens, a lot of times, now they're going to take the new cutter, they are going to put it in here, they're going to bring it down and even though it's going to just feel weird, because there's nothing you're aligning it to, it's just blank space down there, they're going to put it in here, and they're just going to tighten it, just like that and they're going to pull everything, pull this Allen wrench out and this piece, and then we're going to start snapping bits. Because what gives you a false sense of security here is, when you put this cutter tool in, it's actually going to go down and it's going to stop. Okay, so I can't push it any further than that. It's sitting on the top of the piece here. So you put it in like that and so a lot of guys think that, "Hey, that's good enough," right? That it will work... I just actually got it off the cutter there. So a lot of times, that's what guys do, goes push it in, down all the way. Tighten it up, pull the tool out, and then you're going to break the bit.
THE PROPER INSTALLATION
So is what you want to do is after you pull out that cutter, go ahead and do nothing. Go to the screen, it says, ‘Please remove cutter.’ We're just going to hit OK. On the screen there will be ‘Are you sure that no cutter is currently installed?’ Hit OK if there is none, if there is, remove it first. You will notice that the jaw will move and get aligned to the right spot.
So now we're there, we're going to put the tool here, cutter tool in, snap it into place.
We're going to put the new cutter down there and we're just going to drop it right to where it sits. Then we're just going to get this Allen wrench to tighten it up. And pull these two out. Now that we did that, we'll hit OK. And we're good to go.
It's that simple as you will be guided by the prompt. So quick fact, when I look at our sales for all replacement cutting bits that we sell for all the different key machines. By far, the most popular replacement bits are the 1.5 and the 2.5-millimeter bits for the 994 machine. So I'm hoping after reading and watching the blog and video, you're only going to be purchasing from us the replacement cutting bits for this machine when you wear them out from cutting so many keys and not breaking those bits. I'd love to know what your thoughts are in the comments below. Thank you, and we'll see you next time!
