Small end mill bits for aluminum11/18/2023 With little information available for cutting aluminium on this machine, the process was largely trial and error. This bit was not tried on the 4mm sheet but suggested it would bring good results there also. The 1.6mm was cut successfully using the 3mm 2 flute end mill, primarily without coolant. This required ongoing coolant application. The 4mm was primarily milled using the 1/4" 3 flute mill end. We did achieve successful results milling the 1.6mm and the 4mm sheet. Vacuume hold-down may ressolve this issue. The flexibility of this material led to excessive vibrations and bit failure. One important note is that the 1mm sheet was not successfully cut. The down-side of this material is that the cost is approximately double that of 6061. The Machinability of 6061 is regarded as mid level, largely due to to it's high ductility which leads to less effective chip clearingħ000 series Aluminium would have been a more suitible choice for machining of this type and will be investigated further for the next version of the octocopter. Laregly due to cost, we chose to mill using the common 6061 aluminium. This was particularly effective for cutting the 1.6mm sheets we used and required little to no coolant. The greatest success was achieved with the 3mm 2 flute end mill. Side cutting generally requires larger amount of material to be removed and the bits with fewer flutes allow the swawf to evacuate with less restriction. This conclusion seems to relate to the chip clearing capacity of the bits. One general conclusion could be made about the Flute number appropriate to different styles of cutting which is:Įnd mill bits with fewer flutes are better suited to side/horizontal cutting while bits with more flutes are better suited to end milling We trialled a variety of Solid Carbide End mill bits with varying success. The ERC25 1/4" and 1/2"collets are included in the starter kit so using bits to suit these sizes is no problem. We used 3mm and 4mm straight-shank bits so got the ERC25 D3 and ERC25 D4 collets. The type required is ERC25 in whatever size suits your bits. The approriate spindle collets for using smaller metric milling bits are not included in the Shopbot Stater Kit but are a useful addition to the inventory. For 1/4 end mill, 1mm, 5mm, 10mm worked well with intermittant coolant application although very conservative. For 3mm bits, depth of 0.5mm, plunge speed of 5mm/s and feed rate of 10mm/s worked well without coolant although very conservative. Test from low and increase depth and feed rates incrimentally intill cut becomes noisy or unclean, then back off. Settings: with fixed 12000rpm use shopbot Chipload calculator as starting point for settings to conduct testing.Avoid over-tightening to reduce warping of sheet material. Hold Down: use as many points as possible to limit vibration and excess heat.Material: 6061 will mill ok at slow speeds with some coolant, 7075 will mill well with higher speeds and no coolant but more expensive. 3mm bits work well for edge cutting 1.6mm and 4mm sheet
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