Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Lim
Team 188 has been cutting aluminum on a CNC router equipped with a wood router as a spindle for a number of years with a lot of success. Patience, conservative cut depths/feed speeds, a good cutter, and someone to stand over it with a vacuum to clear chips, and coolant are key. Don't expect to be able to hold tolerances to press-fit bearings though!
Here are the cutters that we swear by, and 188 also has adopted:
http://www.onsrud.com/xdoc/SuperO
We run them at 18,000 RPM. I think 188's wood router is a fixed speed at 24,000 RPM which is a bit fast I think, but it is possible. The single flute in the cutter makes a big difference in being able to run at these speeds. |
Mr Lim, we do the exact same thing but we cap out at 14k rpms. Also we just added "compressed air" and just dry cut aluminum. With two flutes you need coolant but with single flutes you don't even need coolant.
For our machine, the reseller does not advice coolant in any spray form but they recommend using drops shown here:
http://www.techno-isel.com/h850/html...ection_22.html
-RC