Yes. It’s messy toxic business, but I’ve done it. Thought I’d share some photos.
Biggest challenge is keeping the rubber from wrapping the spindle.
Wow, that is a new one. I would have never even tried that.
Thanks for sharing. Any special tips to get rubber not to go really bad really fast? Shallow or deep passes, fast or slow?
Stamps?
Exercise mats are fun too.
Honestly, not sure yet. My first attempt, I milled with linear strategy. This was problematic, because the rubber would simply “split” and not actually mill out. Rectilinear will actually remove the strips of rubber, since it cuts in the X and Y direction. Issue is that, once it makes the strips of rubber in the long direction, it goes back around and sometimes picks those strips up into the spindle. Only solution I have as of now is manually removing the strips with a vacuum/yanking them out.
I found going SUPER fast to be best, around 40mm/s. Shallow cuts would probably make the strips thinner easier to manage, since the spindle would probably just rip them apart…but I’ve been hitting the pockets at 1/8" doc @ 40/mm/s. Part cuts and holes are easy, iys the pockets that get tricky.
Nope! These are custom clips, designed to hold two yellowjacket cable ramps together. You can buy a big clamping device made by yellowjacket, but it costs $200+. I made these and saved my company around $5K.
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Nice!
Some more details!
Hole and Cutout Settings:
1/8" 2 Flute 0.375" doc, 5mm/s, no finishing
Pocket Settings:
1/8" 2 Flute 0.064 doc, 80mm/s, no finishing 20% stepover
Cutouts are easy with rubber. Just don’t run it so fast that it smokes or pushes the rubber around. Pockets are the real challenge, and I believe these settings are just about perfect for this situation. Rubber is unique, in that when you hit it with the endmill, you’re not really going to cut out all of those particles and dust them into the air. Mostly, the rubber is just going to peel back.
The key to keeping rubber strands from getting snatched up in your endmill is simply to not make rubber strands! With a very small stepover and reasonably shallow doc, you can actually peel layers of rubber back to mill out your pocket, then simply snip off the flaps at the end. Stepover is the main factor here. Set it too high, and you’ll get fat strings of rubber kind of flapping off of the stock material- not wanting to let go, that is until it gets caught up in the endmill.
The flaps shown in the video either stuck to the stock material after the cutout, or were easy to snip off with some dikes.
Hope this is helpful/interesting for some of you!
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How weird…
Strange, how you prepare parts from a rubber sheet. Idealy is done through the molding process.