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View Full Version : CNC tooling advice for Kress 6990?



marbles
23-02-2013, 02:23 PM
Hi,

I'm just in the middle of building a 4x4 CNC router table to carve blocks of urethane foam.

The CNC bed and the x axis has lots of travel to accommodate thick blocks up to 500mm although its likely it'll not be cutting anything like that, more like 150mm.

The 3D forms i'm working with have quite deep profiles and change height, ie step up and down and in order to get to these I presume need longer shank bits than normal. They are also organic in shape so mega precision or high accuracy is not a a top priority. I do however require the carved shapes to have medium to smooth surface after router. Each router job is approx 500mm x 500mm x 120mm in finished volume.

I currently have a kress 6990 with 3-8mm collets. I can upgrade but at present thats what I have.

I'm a beginner to CNC and I want to know what combination of tooling bits i need to use to for the job outlined:

A: take away bulk material
B: Create an organic detailed surface.

Any advice, thoughts or links would be very much appreciated

Thanks

Shinobiwan
23-02-2013, 09:16 PM
I'm working with upto 100mm thick modelling board and you'll find the kress limiting for long bit choices required to reach the depth your looking at. Really you need 12mm+ shanks for the longer cutters. I use 160mm long cutters with 14mm x 100mm flutes and a 12mm shank. Be warned that these are expensive for carbide although you can pick up HSS for a lot less.

If it were me I'd swap the kress for something that will take at least an ER20 collet like 2.2kw chinese spindle.