On 21 Feb 2017, at 15:34, Todd Zuercher wrote: > I am a wood worker in a large wood working CNC shop. But I need to mill some > aluminum for a project (a jig for another process in our company) but I know > next to nothing about milling such material. What I need is to cut a large > grid out of a 5ft x 10ft sheet of 1/4inch thick MIC6 AL. The machines I will > have to do this are large wood working cncs with flat vacuum tables. We > normally cut flat sheet material like MDF or plywood on a MDF fall-board > (vacuum sucking right through the fall-board (holes, no jig tape, just porous > MDF) These machines have no provisions for coolant Just compressed air blast > and dust/chip collection (big centralized dust collector system). I will > obviously have to disable the dust collection, because I'm pretty sure the > local farmers who pick up our dust won't appreciate AL shavings in their cow > bedding. The machine I am probably going to use has a 12kw 24krpm spindle. I > would like to mill this with a 1/4" 2 flute carbide end mill.
I would choose a single flute uncoated carbide cutter with geometry designed specifically for aluminium. Those are the cutters with which I have had most success. e.g. http://www.cncintheworkshop.com/Welcome.html Marcus > Should I use an up o > r down spiral cutter? What feed speed and RPM would be appropriate? What > depth of cut per pass? Do I need to arrange some sort of mist system for > cooling? What to use and how much liquid in the mist? (Don't want to cause > problems with the MDF fall-board or vacuum hold down system.) The grid is > only going to be about 2 inches wide, with 12 windows in the 5x10 frame (a > lot of wasted material). At this point the plan is to set the milling up with > lots of bridges to hold the grid to the scrap then go back and trim those off > with a final finish pass. > > -- > > ======================================== > > Todd Zuercher > mailto:zuerc...@embarqmail.com > > ======================================== > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most > engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot > _______________________________________________ > Emc-users mailing list > Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
