Has anyone here had success milling steel on a Velox CNC? Looking to cut 0.13 mild steel for some rocket engine parts. Would love to hear how any of y’all found success.
Thanks,
John Rehagen
… I know this isn’t the advice you’re looking for, but that sounds like a great problem for sendcutsend, oshcut, big blue saw, etc? Talk to customer service and see if they’ll cut you a student project sponsorship discount?
Or talking to a local fab shop with a plasma table or laser? Students building rockets are awesome, you can probably find a sole proprietorship that’ll cut some parts in off hours for you with enough networking, in return for watching the launch with the team and putting the sponsoring school on their cv. Maybe that’s the California in me.
I guarantee it will be cheaper than you think by the time you quote it to three or four shops, and specifically cheaper than blowing up a bunch of nice endmills trying to use the wrong tool platform.
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You can definitely cut steel on a CNC router like a Velox with the right feeds and speeds.
In the absence of other recommendations, try a small (4mm?) 4 flute endmills at low RPM around 8-10k. Run an IPT of .0005" (so 0.0005 x 4 x 10,000 = 20IPM) or so and do a low DOC and WOC to get started. Make sure to run coolant. I’ve seen steel cut on small routers before, it’s tricky but definitely achievable.
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I’ve seen it done on a little 3018 router even. It’s just a matter of taking really light cuts and waiting a long time, and realizing that your surface finish won’t be great.
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Most mills want to run much slower than a router is able. And milling steel needs a lot of force. It definitely cannot be cut in the same way as aluminum.
As @asid61 wrote, tiny cuts with a good chip rate and coolant might work.
I’ve cut mild steel and cast iron on a Xcarve using trichordial milling. Very slow. My real question is what are you using the mild steel for on a rocket motor? All commercial high power rocket motors are AL. Why the steel?
haha yeah
I like these ideas, thank you!
I think I am going to go that route if possible, and resort back to the Velox if needed… as some said, it is possible, just not ideal.
Although I am on Texas A&M’s Sounding Rocketry Team, this is an independent project, which means that the money is coming out of my own pocket (broke college student lol). The aim is to build a non flying engine so steel is okay.
Thank you all for the help!
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If it’s non-flying you should really go with something that is NOT a major challenge for a router… steel is where you need to step up to a real CNC milling machine!
Here’s a nice video showing someone’s progress in cutting steel on a benchtop router: https://youtu.be/rTFn84UwFCM
The Avid Pro is pretty good, but not all that much better than a Velox. I’m sure the OP can get at least decent results on their machine.
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Wow, that’s really not bad. Better than I would have expected.
The key to cutting steel on routers is the tool path. Call it trochoidal, peel or what ever it greatly improves the performance.
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