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What if you lose your spacing blocks for your Framon 2 code machine? Are you out of luck? Let's find out.
One of the most common questions about the Framon 2 key machine is its little spacing blocks. They're little, and there's a bunch of them but a handful. And what happens if one rolls off the bench and you can't find it, or you had a lock? Can you still cut the key? Well, the answer is yes. And it's not as hard as you think; the little spacing blocks are like little quick cheats to make it the job fast for you.
With the whiteboard, we will talk about the spacing blocks and even cut a Y11 key without the space blocks.
And the reason I'm going to do that is that if you're not too familiar with the machine, I want you to read my recent blog or watch the video, see how it works with the spacing block, and then come back to watch/read how to cut a key without the spacing blocks.
My goal here is that by the end of this blog, worrying about having a spacing block or not is a thing in the past.
THE BASICS
What I'm about to go over is true for anything when it comes to the Framon machine. The principles here are going to apply, although we're doing a Y11 key for a toolbox. Anytime you look at the spacing and depth information, even when you look at it like an HPC card, you're going to see where it has the spacing increments on it. For this code series, the increment is.0970. And if you look at the Framon data for it, it will recommend the number 5 spacing block.
The spacing is .0970. And as I did, I wrote out the actual spaces listed for the code series. The first one is .125. That's where we're setting our first space and depth before we use the spacing block, rather than the second is a .222, .319, .416, .513. All of this spacing information tells you that .0970 is the difference between the first and the second space. It has the same space from the second to the third space. In short, the spacing difference between each one of these spaces is a .0970.
What Framon did with their little spacing blocks is they just made it quick and easy for you. On the drawing of spacing block number 5 on the board, you'll see the .097 and the little white marks. All they did is they made it, and so once you have it lined up on one of them, then you need to go to the second space; it's just automatically moving it over to the next space, which is going to be a .0970 space difference.
So to do this without this spacing block is doable. It's just you must think a little more. And so what's going to happen is you're going to go from once you set up to the .125, the next space, you're going to have to go up to the .222, which is going to require you just to keep turning it and keep track of it. So at the end of the day, do you need the Framon space bars? Well, the answer's no, but they're sure nice to have kind of like a candy bar. So let's head on over to the machine and cut a Y11 key without using the space bar.
CUTTING WITHOUT SPACING BLOCKS
We're going to put it into practice with our information, and I'll be cutting the Y11 key test it on a toolbox. If you're not familiar with the video where I cut this key for the toolbox, there'll be a link in the notes below.
We can see, this is space block number 5 that we'd be using, and that's the .097, so if you're not familiar with that, go ahead and watch that either before or after this, make sure you're on the same page.
The tip stop is the same on the top, on the bottom, so I can go and put this in here.
It will all end up on the bottom tip stop, get it, put in here. We're good to go there
Start by going to zero the machine out.
At this point, we got to go to the first space, which is a .125. One complete turn is equivalent to .050, do one more, and that's going to be a .100. Close It up by turning it to 25. We're done with our first step.
Since we are done with .125, first cut is a .250, so we're going to dial this into .250 right there looking at the cheat sheet. Go to the little cheater here, then look right there for the zero, turn the machine on, and we're going to go ahead and cut it.
Note: Nothing cut will happen, no big deal.
The spacing is the .097 so what we need to do is to go to the second space and rotate it. How I view it is to rotate it twice, back off three, and that will get us to that .097, because each full turn will be a .050.
Do turn it to 25 again, making it .050. Do it one more time. That's going to get us right at 100 and when we go back three to get to that .097 space. Once it is set up, the next cut is a 1, so we go and cut it.
Note: Nothing cut will happen, no big deal.
For the next cut, we need to go another .097. Since we're at .222, we're going to go twice to 22 and back it off three.
The next thing to do is dial the number 4 depth, a .19, so we're going to get over to 0, set the cheat sheet to 200, and back it off 10 to get 190—time to cut.
Note: It's going to make that cut.
Remember, we're at 19. Now we need to go to a .097 again, so we're going to do two 4 rotations to 19. I'm going to back it off three to get to that .097. No need to set the depth since it is also number 4. Let's go and make that cut.
Note: It's going to make that cut.
We have one more four depth, so we need to set the space. So we're at 16 right now. Two four rotations to 16, back off three. One, two, back off, three. We'll make that last number four.
All right, and there you have it. Of course, we got to go over and try the key because it's not fun to do this. If you can't test the key, make sure it works.
Alright, so here we are, the moment of truth. Did I put the correct spacing in? As you can see, it is not hard to do, but you do have to concentrate and go through the paces and, depending on what it is, develop something like I did. Go to 100 back off three but let's see if it works.
It works. I'd love to know what you think in the comments below. Thanks, and we'll see you next time!