This "Rotary Shear" Nibbler Caught My Eye

[MrWhoopee]

The ads on YT rarely register with me, but this one did. No affiliation etc.

Electric Drill Shears Attachment Cutter Nibbler

Spring Sale ✨Free shipping from $60✨ "Good cutter! More than I expected." ——Justin J. JUST GET EVERYTHING DONE IN SECONDS FASTER & SAFER SHARP BLADE EASY TO USE FAST CUTTING GENERAL MODEL Electric Drill Shears Attachment Cutter Nibbler $87.99$39.99UP TO 55% OFF YES! I WANT TO ORDER NOW 1h 32m...

www.peachloft.com

 

[Larry$]

but this one did.

I've also seen the ads. But ..... Maybe for very occasional use? Works like those can openers that remove the entire lid. Those don't last well because the gripping teeth wear and then slip.
I've got Kett shears, work fine. Also have a Hitachi nibbler that works great. So I don't need one but someone has to be the guinea pig for the HM site. Did you just volunteer?

 

[Jake M]

I havn't seen that one yet. It looks at first glance like it's gonna be spectacularly good, or spectacularly bad. Not sure I've figured out which one yet. I see they absolutely blew the budget on the drills they're running it with on their website. That's reassuring. That one thing, curring the arc on the white (aluminum?), it looks like one's fingers are very much in jeopardy, at least for modern production. But I suppose that I still use a table saw, radial arm saw, chain saw, band saw, lathe... I guess you could stick your fingers into those too if you wanted to.

Hurry up and buy it now or the price doubles... Ooooff I'm kinda curious, it's not terribly expensive for a gamble, but I think too many red flags are up...

 

[CJ5Dave]

I have one. I asked my wife for one for Christmas. Will cut aluminum flashing OK, wont touch galvanized roofing. And it runs sideways. But their are probably better grades of them, like Harbor Freight VS Milwaukee. I would pass on one if I were you.

 

[dbb-the-bruce]

Yes, if you get one would be interested in your experience.

I have a bench mount hand crank sheet metal cutter that operates in a similar way. It works OK for trimming a larger sheet but suffers the same problem as all single cut sheetmetal tools - each side of the cut wants to / has to curl in opposite directions. Hence any cut that doesn't have substantial width for the part you want will curl badly and then has to be "flattened" out. This can be a non-starter depending on what kind of thing you are trying to cut out.

The only way that I know of around this problem is the dual blade cutters produce a thin curled ribbon out of the center leaving the material on each side relatively clean.

Another thing that this style of roller cutter has is fine teeth on one of the rollers that help/assist feeding the material into the rollers. Out of necessity, the feed teeth are on "stock" side of the cut not the waste side. The teeth will leave a track of trenches along the cut edge of your part. For harder metals this may not be an issue, but for me at least having the marks on edges of copper or brass sheet was also just one more negative. Again, it depends on what you are making.

 

[MrWhoopee]

I have one. I asked my wife for one for Christmas. Will cut aluminum flashing OK, wont touch galvanized roofing. And it runs sideways. But their are probably better grades of them, like Harbor Freight VS Milwaukee. I would pass on one if I were you.

There we go! I was hoping to benefit from someone else's experience. I didn't expect much for the price, but you never know. And the videos look SO impressive.

 

[C-Bag]

I’ve been seeing that on YT also. I‘ve never had anything that was driven by a drill be worth a darn. It looked to me like one of the junk gadgets HF used to have in the checkout counter for cheap 20yrs ago. Guess my junk radar was right

 

[CJ5Dave]

Part of the issue with this one (there are several versions out there) was the slack in the roller bushing/bolt. I put another bolt in there with more threads and it helped some.

 

[GeneT45]

I've used the drill powered nibblers (*not* these rotary cutters) before and they cut great. Controlling them is another matter - almost takes three hands. With a little experimenting you can make some templates to trace if you have common figures. I used them for some square-ish cutouts in electrical cabinets. Not enough to find out how long they last, but enough that it didn't matter. Heck, you can buy three of them for the price of a Greenlee knockout punch...

GsT

 

[C-Bag]

Controlling them is another matter - almost takes three hands.

That's been my contention with all drill powered gadgets. And if it's hard to control it's not of much use to me.

I have just about every tool for cutting sheet metal except one of those. And a standalone made for the job always seems to just work. A little while back Jere Kirkpatrick posted a demo on YT on how to reprofile,sharpen and retemper the rotary cutters on my HF beadroller. It's now on the wannado list. Like Jere points out though these kinds of rotary cutters cut best in straight or in one direction(L or R) depending on the design.