I was able to cut out parts for a project from some aluminum 6061 1/8 inch thick, using mpcnc with Estlcam. I was using a 1/8 inch diameter end mill with one up cutting flute with dw660 at full speed. I was using a shop vac to continuous vacuum chips as generated. I noted that with a depth of cut of 0.2mm at 3mm/s feed rate I had a pretty good finish on the edge of the part. I played with the settings to try to see if it would be able to cut faster. I was able to increase the depth of cut to 0.25mm and the speed to 4.5mm/s but on the first pass quite a bit of the aluminum chips would weld to the edges of the cut; some of those would be trimmed with subsequent cuts but basically the finish ended up not looking quite as good.
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I’m still fine tuning my setup before I try aluminum, thanks for this info. What finishing pass allowance are you using and what kind of tolerances are your parts holding to?
Here are some photos of parts I cut out, the smaller piece was cut with 0.2mm Z step as was one of the four T brackets, the external part dimensions on those were within 0.1mm.
The more aggressively cut T brackets external part dimensions were within 0.3mm
I am using the same tool for the roughing and finishing pass with Estlcam, I used the same settings for my finishing passes as the roughing pass except that I setting my finishing passes to Z step of 1-2mm
I think for aluminum you need an air blast to get the chips out faster. The vac will leave some chips in the cut as you found out. A few of the guys have used a ball inflation needle with the tip cut off attached to an air compressor to blow the chips out of the cut.
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I have some settings that worked great for me in a recent youtube video, No air, and I might have slowed the router a bit.