On 02/21/2017 09:34 AM, 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. OK, first thing is to either use coolant (very messy at 24 K RPM) or take light cuts and keep the cutter moving rapidly, to prevent the aluminum from heating up. You could run feeds up to several hundred IPM if the machine is rigid enough to handle it. An up-spiral cutter will lift the chips out of the cut. A down-spiral cutter will not, and that could become a problem. Although, maybe the vacuum system will take care of that. Probably, the weight of the 1/4" sheet is enough to avoid lifting of the sheet by the up-cut spiral. You should use a feed per tooth of about .0025", so that could be 400 - 500 IPM. I'd take a step-down depth of about 1/8", so you ought to be able to cut it in two passes. This will be removing about 1.2 cu in/minute, so will require about 3.6 Hp. I suspect it will be LOUD, too!
Jon ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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
