A quick question to anyone out there who’s successfully milled out aluminum XZ plates…
Once you got dialed in with CAM and your machine, how long did one XZ plate take to mill out? I’ve finished 1 and it came in at 2:59. Is this reasonable?
Here’s ho the first one turned out…
HECK yes!
Mmmmm, both sides need to be smooth and flat.
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Can you post your cam settings? I’ve milled a few of them and don’t remember them taking that long. But I was cutting smooth 1/4” aluminum plate so that might make a difference
Ohhhh, is that three hours, or minutes?
3 hours.
I believe this is how I had the 1/8" single flute endmill setup, or at least very close…
(I didn’t use trochoidal for the 8 small holes. Used the same end mill with troch turned off and only used 2mm for DOC and finished them with the drill press.)
BTW I’ve only successfully finished the one. Many tool breaks before and after the one in the picture.
I would do small depth of cut and not use trochoidal. https://youtu.be/R2X0r7mZG5A?si=SO9pW_LB7vaKtYW6, or https://youtu.be/E7YSCwhcHuE?si=mkbutKnJhEK8qHpI
That lets you clear chips and move faster. if you have air or mist you can go much much faster. Both those videos I do not have my $10 mist system on, with mist it is far easier.
Honestly I think it is mostly just the air helping to prevent recutting.
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Ok I’m going to be opposite of Ryan and say keep the trochoidal but increase your stepover to 5% and I believe I ran. 3mm/s on Z with no problems at all.
Honestly make some test cuts with his and my suggestions and see what works best for you. Each machine is different and each operator likes things differently
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I was wondering which “trochoidal” fan was going to speak first.
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Best advice ever. Metal is tricky, each build is going to behave very differently, much more so than wood. Cut out a lot of small squares, or logos, anything. They only take 10 minutes or so and each one will teach you a lot.
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Usually that’s me but I was asleep.
Trochoidal, Trochoidal…! Hoohaa.
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My plan is to assemble the unit and then figure which diamonds must be removed and then mill them off. I have a nice selection of .250 diamond plate (which is .250 not counting the diamonds). You think that’ll work? If not I can always buy a blank sheet…
Yeah, that will work.
Okay, I wish I could hit 2 solutions in this thread…
I hit solution on Ryan’s setting because I successfully cut a second XZ plate out of .250 aluminum diamond plate, but this time in 47 minutes! That’s 73% faster than 2:59. Thanks Ryan!
(Oddly though it cut it about 3mm smaller than the first 1. The only thing the changed besides the tool setup and CAM code is that I made the switch to ESTLCAM v12 to ESTLCCAM v11. I’m going to have to do some digging on that.)
Anyway, getting back to 2 solutions in this thread, is that I started gathering the parts I need to setup a alcohol mist. Jonathon Jones video of cutting .250 aluminum is so cool that I gotta try it myself!
Lastly, I got my hands on some fairly large pieces of .750 HDPE boards and I was thinking that about making my YZ plates out them. What’s your takes on that?
That stuff is a dream to mill!!! It is not very rigid but at 3/4" it should be okay.
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I think I must’ve watched the Mad Max movies to many times. I will go out of my way to repurpose something that someone else has thrown away as opposed to buying new. My entire family think I’m nuts when I bring stuff home all the time. Luckily I have a full basement under my house that I strategically place things and an area over the hill that I use as a stockpile.
Lately I’ve been getting this terrific .750 plywood crating material from a shop my Dad does work for. It’s got .125 MDF lining on both sides and it’s cross-section dimensional accuracy is tight. Here’s the kicker, it comes in in 48x96" or 42x96" sheets! All I have to do to each is pull some screws out of the edge and some pneumatic staples. I’m going to start building the torsion box table that you and Doug Joseph masterminded with the material. I’m going to actually try to cut half of each rib on my 28x28 MPCNC and then shift the piece in the Y direction and cut the other half of the rib. If it works I will post pictures on Things You’ve Made section.
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