If you are getting chips that are "almost dust" you have a serious problem with your speeds/feeds. Increase your feed rate and/or reduce the tool rpm. You should always be getting real chips. I find that ZrN (Zirconium Nitride) coating on the cutters helps significantly to reduce chip welding in soft aluminum.
> -----Original Message----- > From: Gene Heskett [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: Saturday, April 20, 2019 8:58 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: [Emc-users] milling tool life, or lack thereof. > > Greetings all; > > Having discovered the settings that control the low frequency boost in > this VFD, and having rigged a pretty dry misting arrangement, I figured > it was as good a time as any to cut the end panels of the box that has > the interface cards in it. These panels are about .035" thick, and are > hard anodized which presents a challenge to most carbide tooling. So I > set it up to do the connectors holes in one panel, and the db cutouts > for the computer cableds db 25's in the other panel. It did a beautiful > job on the 11 holes in the first panel, but swapping panels to cut the > db25 patterns was a disaster, the tool was obviously starting to plug > up. So I wound up with ragged holes with lots of metal thrown up that I > had to sharpen up my pocket knife and clean up. Didn't break the tool > but probably pushed my luck on that point. Used about 4 oz of kool mist > for the whole job, so it was wet, but not really soaking the cherry > spoil board so bad I can't use it again after its dry. > > This was an uncoated sc tool, 4mm in diameter, 3 flute with about a 45 > degree up spiral. Speeds ranged from 6000 revs to 14000. Chips thrown > were almost dust and its obvious I need to put up some lexan splash > guards. > > The fact that it plugged up tells me that kool mist is not the magic > bullet for this job. Safflower oil, which I used for one job years ago, > would be better, but the cleanup needs solvent, lots of it. On > everything it settles on. Including your lungs as I used more air > pressure and smaller orifices. Blame it on younger and dumber as I was > then in my mid-60's, 20 years ago? > > Any suggestions as to what to concoct for misting fluid next time, that > would prevent the sticking and plugging up while doing such sheet alu > the next time? Or was the hard anodized brushed satin finish the real > killer? Add some liquid dish soap to enhance its "sticky" maybe? IDK. > > Thanks everybody. > > Cheers, Gene Heskett > -- > "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: > soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." > -Ed Howdershelt (Author) > Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene> > > > > _______________________________________________ > Emc-users mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
