They are available…it all depends when the distributor and the stockists get off their duffs and place their order with Xuron. It doesn’t take long for a package of them to travel via Air Mail to reach the side of the puddle.
Email me and I can get you hooked up.
I haven’t tried the new Xuron’s but these two sets from Micro-Mark have always worked great for me although the cam action cutters are pricey:
These are the despruing tweezer that I use for smaller parts:
I have several of these of these too but the compression of the part before the slicing is complete is still pretty high. I prefer them for nibbing away any sprue tags left after the part has been removed from the sprue or best yet for dressing my paint brushes of errant and damaged hairs.
Hakko’s CHP flush cutters are superb, and inexpensive (they go for about $10 or so). They’re superior, IMHO, to the earlier Xuron cutters, on plastic. Hakko is the US importer (they sell soldering irons) and the CHP tools are made in Italy. Several sizes, for metal wire and now they have a model specifically made for plastic, too, the model TR-25-B. And they have wonderful handles, too. I have two sizes of the earlier cutters, the TR-25 and a smaller one with a thinner smaller head for tight clearance work.
Flush cutters have edges that match up, while bypass cutters (the Xuron are extremely fine bypass cutters) work differently. The bypass cutter edges literally don’t match, but pass by each other. The edges on the latter last longer because they don’t touch each other. Each type leaves a different result on the part you cut, and it depends on the material being cut. While the Xuron cut very close, they do leave a slightly raised square stub, and the flush cutters leave, if anything, a pointed stub. Now these stubs are extremely small, and on most plastic the flush cutter, IMHO, leaves less or nothing to trim. These remnant stubs are less prominent or virtually invisible to the naked eye if the cutter edge is very acute; I cannot feel any remnant when I use the CHP cutters, but I can when I use the Xuron. Plastic is much softer than metal, so cutters with more acute edges are preferred on plastic. The more acute the edge, however, the shorter is the edge’s lifespan.
Any of these cannot really be resharpened when they get dull, but at $10-20 a tool, they’re easily and cheaply replaced.
i’d just like to say how good these sprue cutters are.
i got mine this week and having used them for a couple of days i can say there worth the money.
thanks to gerald for the quick postage to the UK.
cheers paul
[#ditto] I got mine from Gerald in March, and am quite chuffed about them myself. [^]
Tsunoda diagonal cutters
Watch out for xuron and the likes of cheap diagonal cutters. Tips are generally offset and impossible to obtain a clean cut with them.
The slightly offset tips* are designed that way for a reason. Like a scissors the jaws must pass each other slightly to cut cleanly…versus clamping and crushing the part away. Xuron has been respected in this industry for decades for their quality tools.
If you’re happy with what your using that’s great, but don’t trash what you haven’t tried yourself, namely the 2175ET. The new Pro Sprue Cutter is an improvement on the original cutters which have been around for as long as I can remember…thousands of modelers have been using them for years. Those who are now using the new 2175ET will tell you that they are much better than the originals…why because a modeler (myself) took on the task to make a good product better.
There must be something to this because sales surged after the hands on reviews began being published. It wasn’t because of a catch phrase or gimmick, it was respected modelers endorsing the product as one that delivers in performance.
*Xuron refers to this as Micro Shear Technology.