I’m starting to get really comfortable with 2.5D milling by cutting things out of plywood, and I’m looking to optimize my workflow
Does anyone have tips for slotting/“part” cutting, specifically for evacuating the chips? I played with a range of speed and feeds on the 1/8” single upcut, 4mm DOC, between 15 - 30 mm/s and setting 2-6 on the Makita, but nothing seemed to help with chip evac. For conversations sake, let’s assume a baseline of 15 mm/s, Makita #2 (12,000 rpm IIRC), 4mm DOC, as those settings got me some great cuts but lacked in chip evac.
From what I gather, the challenges with slotting include lack of space for the dust/chips to escape, and my desire to cut deeper passes lol. Any advice?
Ah good point, I am running dust collection but I changed up my dust shoe back to the original design before my cuts yesterday. The design I was using worked really well suction-wise but wouldn’t let me cut deep enough without bottoming it out.
My printer crapped out while printing the original dust shoe (too cold in garage so bed adhesion was nil and it went wild) so I had to adapt/duck tape the TPU bristles to the shoe. So I was using different bristles and they weren’t placed nearly as well as they normally should be.
I was just fixated on feeds, speeds, and depth so wasn’t thinking about the dust collection aspect of it. Thanks for pointing that out!
If the dust collector isn’t doing the job, you might try clearing the toolpath with a shop-vac or an air nozzle and compressed air (wear safety glasses) during/after each pass.
At times I’ve even had to resort to using a tool (small screwdriver or pick) to dislodge the packed in dust from a deeper slot. Fairly easy to do on a large cut (just follow the router after it passes over a section), a bit more challenging on a small cut where the router never clears the cutting area.
