Vibrations during CNC

[JesseK]

A bit confused here. When you say the middle piece that's being cut out vibrates-does that mean you're cutting the outer perimeter, and a chunk is falling down through the hole you've created?

-- Correct --

Thanks for the tips guys, there's alot of great stuff here.

We should be able to keep the middle pieces for scraps if I bolt the middle piece in the opposite corner to where the CNC ends the final cut. For now, we'll try that on Saturday.

To clarify a bit more, we're still very new to the CNC; the teacher in the school who's an expert on it simply cannot make it to our meetings due to other things. So we're slowly figuring things out based upon emails and cautious common sense.

The way we mill things right now:
- Clamp the piece in place
- Manually zero on a reference point
- Automatically move the bit (via the "GOTO" button) to the first calculated point on the CAD drawing -- we have to manully input the X, Y, and Z coordinates
- Turn the spindle on, drill down into the metal
- Set the speeds for cutting (not sure of the units so I can't post the exact settings yet) -- It takes about 30 minutes to cut a rectangle that's 2.5" x 5" in 1/8" thick aluminum using a 1/4" bit
- Use the "GOTO" button again to go to the next point in the CAD drawings we generated
- Use the "GOTO" button three more times to finish the rectangle

So in the end it's still not a fully automated process...yet...but it's definitely an improvement in quality over what we've done in the past. We'll have our own process perfected by the time we get the first rail done, and hopefully will have more guidance by Tuesday of next week so we can do the other rail faster, more autonomously, or with higher quality.