My assumption was that the cut would only cut the edge of the washer and shave it down closer to the size of the bolt head. The washer would still work fine with a majority of the outside edge missing.
You could even chuck it onto a bolt in a drill or drill press and sand it down to the size of the bolt head first if you wanted.
I think the jist of the initial link was just to offer an alternative. I don’t think it was meant to put down your 3d printed washer. I’m sorry if my comment offended you.
It doesn’t offend me, I was just offering the explanation as to why I would worry about it, in contrast to why you said that you wouldn’t.
I, of course, was not worried about whether or not the end mill “could” cut through a rubber washer, but a hot end mill in rubber does have the ability to gum up on the bit, and I wouldn’t want that to happen mid cut.
Some of those washers in that pack are pretty large, so it’s more than just shaving it down. Given the layout of the sheet and how small the clearances are between parts, it would probably be 4 full bit cuts through the rubber.
I never said it would not work, my response are listing what I see as the drawbacks to doing it.
Given the point of the thread was to help people less experienced, I wanted to make sure those thing were known.
And since the majority of people that come through here seem to have 3D printers handy, I wanted to make sure to point out that there are benefits to printing them yourself
The finishing pass seems to go much faster in the preview than the roughing pass, but I’m not sure that means anything. Perhaps I’ll open up the gcode file and try to see there.
So I couldn’t see any circles in the preview for the finishing pass, but definitely did for the roughing pass.
I checked the gcode file, and the section for the roughing pass for one part was almost 300,000 lines of complicated code, while the finishing pass for the same part was only about 15 lines of simple code.
I’m using v11.245, and it seems that it only uses trochoidal for the roughing pass, and normal milling for the finishing pass.
The EstlCAM website has a comment about v11 being stable and reliable, but no longer being developed, while v12 is under development, and probably has unidentified bugs.
In your experience, is v12 stable enough to make the permanent switch?
I never really used 11, so I don’t know how much difference there is, but 12 has been good enough for me.
I went to 12 since I knew the writing was on the wall, and since I’m not doing anything but personal projects, I figured I might as well test and learn, and not have to worry about switching in a year. Also, the tool management in v12, imo, is much, much better.
If you are running a production shop and need it to be perfect and issue free, then that’s maybe a different thing to consider.
It is by no means perfect, so you have to be willing to take some bugs in stride when using pre-release stuff
Another hold down option I have seen with thin metal is Hide glue and MDF. Clean the metal so it can glue down then apply a thin even coat of hide glue and press the metal down on the MDF. Use the MDF to hold down the work piece. Once you are done, soak the board and cut parts in water and after a bit the hide glue dissolves and releases the parts.
