Ultra Tec Fantasy Cutting Machine Review

If you want to cut unique fantasy gems like this, then you need a fantasy machine like this. I'm Steve Moriarty from moregems.com, and to achieve a fantasy cut similar to this, you need this type of machine. This will cut concave facets and groove facets, and today we're going to unbox this machine and show you a little about the setup of this Ultra Tec machine. So this is something completely new for me. I've never cut fantasy cuts. So we're going to learn this together. So now we're going to take a look, see what's inside. And I want to explain to you that I am a rep for Ultra Tec. I do get a commission from Ultra Tec on machines that you buy.

So if you bought this because you watched our videos, which we have many videos on faceting, and now we'll start doing videos on fantasy cutting, so if you let Ultra Tec know that you bought it because of these videos, I'll get a commission and what I'll do for you then is to provide you a nice piece of rough that you can cut either on the fantasy machine or on the Ultra Tec V5. You can either facet or fantasy cut it, and you'll produce a stone that's probably going to be worth in the 400 or 500 or even more dollars. So let Ultra Tec know that's that we are why you bought the machine, and we'll take care of you with a nice piece of rough. So let's get at it and see what's in the box.

For all the details on how to get this free piece of rough, check out the description of this video. So here's what came in the box, the basic machine, couple of gauges, full tool set, some instruction manuals, some instructions from Dr. Facet, water dispenser and a drip tank. So I'm not sure how this all goes together, but we're going to go through this together and learn how to put the machine together. And then we're going to learn how to do a fantasy cut.

So one thing to note, this machine doesn't come with the mast, so you need to have an Ultra Tec mast, which is the V5 in this case, and it does fit right here and goes into the machine. So it doesn't come with a mast. You can order the mast. The basic machine is $44.98, I think, and the mast is $41.90 if you need a mast. My interest in fantasy cutting started back in the early 1980s when I met with Bernd Munsteiner at his house in Stipshausen, Germany, may have been West Germany at the time, but he is who popularized the fantasy cutting. He was a real artist at it, and after I met with him, I came back and I actually produced some tools with the intention of fantasy cutting. So I went back to my high school to the shop there, and one of my old teachers helped me produce these, although I never used them.

So now we'll get into fantasy cutting for real on a machine that I'm sure will help us produce some great cuts in the future. All right, let's get this together. Start setting it up. So the first step is to install the dial indicators. They both are identical. One goes here, it says to leave a little gap of several millimeters right here by the bracket. So I put it in there and just tighten it down. So that one's installed and the other one goes right over here. Again, leave it a little gap in here, and we're installed. So this dial indicator, one rotation equals one millimeter and it's capable of reading on the secondary dial, 10 rotations. So basically 10 millimeters.

Anyway, that's where you adjust that. So the next step is to install the lamp, but if you remember in our unboxing of the faceting machine, they don't ship a lamp with the machine. So good idea to order a lamp. Right now, I'm going to take the lamp from my faceting machine, which should fit this machine, and just pull that up and it clamps on and now you're ready. So next, we'll install the tool drive motor. There's two places it can go. This position is for the cylindrical tools that cut concave facets. And then the other position, you need this spacer bar, which goes right here. These little knobs in the back are towards the bottom, and then you can put this into position and push it up to the spacer bar and then tighten it down. Then here's where the power plug goes, and now you're in position for slitting, making grooves.

So here's the mast for my Ultra Tec V5 flat faceting machine that actually goes on this machine the same way it does on the faceting machine. So that's easy, but there is some setup to this, which they say the first time can take 20, 25 minutes. You can get it all marked out to where it may only take five minutes each time you set up, or the other option is to buy another mast and have it dedicated to the machine.

Now, keep in mind that I'm new at this. So we hope we'll get all this right. So this is the lateral stop bracket because you need to eliminate lateral swinging of the yoke. So these two screws go in these holes and they align up here with the screws on the side of the mast. So there it's tightened down, and I'm assuming this is something we have to remove each time we move the mast over to the flat faceting machine. There are some adjustments necessary and we'll learn later how to do those. So we'll set up the water tank. Here's the mast for the water tank, goes right there. So that's our water tank, and this is the overflow for the machine here. So this will cool your tools and this will be the drain for the water from the water tank.

And from there, we'll learn how to adjust the machine. Keep in mind that this is the first time I've touched this machine, so we might not have gotten everything right, but that's the basic setup of the machine. Now learning how to adjust all this and make it work correctly, that's our next challenge. So this is my Ultra Tec Fantasy machine. It's going to be an interesting challenge learning this new skill, but the beauty that fantasy cuts produce is just an additional facet of this business and I look forward to learning it. So if you're interested in learning how to fantasy cut, go to ultratecfacet.com and order your machine and be sure to tell them that Steve Moriarty sent you.