I’m building a kit car and need a radiator grill.
Have designed one in CAD and cut it on the LR3 to test fit it.
This is just for prototyping - the final version will be laser cut from stainless steel (not by me!!). Although, now I’m wondering whether I could cut an aluminium one. Thoughts?
Don’t look too closely at the pictures, please 
As I say, this is just a prototype to test-fit.
Looks good! Aluminium would work, but it would as well be a pretty long program with all those holes. 
Pre-drill some 6.0mm holes with short drill bit? Should save time 
Good idea, they work pretty well and it’s a lot faster.
Very nice. What material did you prototype with? How big is this and the thickness of the fins? Looks like this would be fun to make a simple sand cast of with Aluminum and finish on the CNC.
Hmm, interesting.
I cut this as a load of small hexagons, but I think you are suggesting that I clear most of the material by drilling and then clear the remainder of the material as pockets.
Am I understanding that right?
I just used some scrap laminate flooring - 8mm thick.
The fins are 2mm. Total width is around 700mm.
Interesting suggestion about the sand casting but that’s something I know nothing about.
Yes just like that. And if the drills diameter is right no need to make full pockets only following hexagons profile inside.
Looks sharp! Laser cut stainless will be impressive. CNC cut aluminum would be nice too, not quite as nice. The suggestion above to pre-drill so the CNC operations won’t have to do slow plunge cuts, is a good idea. You can pre-mark locations to drill by a CNC operation that just barely spot drills.
Thanks for the replies.
My experience here is limited, so please excuse the dumb questions …
If I eventually cut the profile of the hexagons (which is what I did on the prototype, vacuuming each one out of the way as soon as it was free), then I will be cutting all the perimeters in entirety.
In that case i don’t understand how drilling the centres beforehand is helpful. It’s just removing material that I will cut around later.
What an I missing?
You wouldn’t cut the contours as but to have tabs but do pockets. The drill would clear a lot of material more easily than another endmill.
It is quite heavy for the endmill to remove material in full diameter. Versus you have allready cleared (drilled) some of the material away.
I mentioned something in my reply that you may have missed, and it has to do with the fact that normally the plunge cut rate is slower, usually half or only 1/4 or 1/3 of the normal XY cut feet rate. This means that if you have to do a slow plunge cut for every single one of those hex cut operations, it will make the job take a very long time. But if you’ve already manually pre-drilled in pre-marked locations, then you can crank your plunge rate up because the cutting bit, on its downward movement in Z axis, is not actually doing a plunge cut. It’s merely moving at high speed (what is called a rapid), down into an area that you had already pre-drilled. This means the cutting happens only in the XY direction, not in the Z direction.
I have never test it with v1e machines, but I would try to pre-drill with using the cnc 
With or without? I bought some drill bits for the 3.2mm holes for the plates and it was a magical experience. So much better than with a normal endmill in aluminium.
With what? I would use drill-bitt to make pre holes and I would cut the profile with endmill and I would use CNC for all that
Okay. The preposition should have been “by”, that confused me semantically. 
So I thought you mixed up with/without. 
Sorry. I wasn’t interested in English at school 
(children remember to listen at school!!) One of the reasons I’m hanging around here is to learn English 
Thanks for all the input. I think I get it now.
I’ll have to work out our how to program that
However all this complication is making me lean more towards paying someone to laser or water cut it
Good point
