My Build - I blame you lot for this....!

[HiltonSteve]

Eventually got time to finish off my coolant upgrade this afternoon.

Got the tank and pump from Axminster, bargain at £130!

Made up some side plates out of 2mm stainless steel and screwed them in position with some neoprene 3mm rubber sandwiched inbetween to stop any leaks. Worked well and no leaks so far!

Did a few test cuts, 30mm dia pockets at 5mm deep, cutting 1mm at a time with a 6mm HSS 2 flute slot drill. Spindle running at 4000rpm with a feedrate of 800mm/min. Noticeable difference now it is flooded with coolant.

Need to tidy pipe work up but will do that once I have got hold of some energy chain and then will do cabling at same time.

Will sort your plates out tomorrow Lee.

[blackburn mark]

POSH!! its doing my head in watching some of you buggers cutting... im still stuck with cutting my finger nails :)

[Lee Roberts]

I know just how you feel Mark, only i'v not got any nails left to cut .

Cheers Steve looks good mate, dose the waste get filtered and sent back to the res or ?

Did you get my package ?

Also what noticeable differences have you noticed :question:

Lee

[HiltonSteve]

Cheers Steve looks good mate, does the waste get filtered and sent back to the res or ?

Yes Lee, the coolant returns to the tank were there is a filter to catch any swarf, also the tank has baffles inside so that any swarf that gets through the filter ends up at the opposite end of the tank to the pump pick up pipe.

Did you get my package ?

Yes I did, had to go and collect it this morning, thanks for that! Will get your couplers sorted this week and will try and have everything back to you for the weekend. Did not get round to finishing your plates yesterday as beer and other stuff got in the way, will have them done tonight though.

Also what noticeable differences have you noticed :question:

Difference cutting aluminium now is that I am cutting with a 6mm standard HSS 2 flute slot drill with no problems at all, not tried any of the alimaster cutters yet but at the moment I can't see any need to. Also it means once I set the machine running I can switch the lights off shut the door and go and have a cup of tea and a hobnob then come back when its finished!

[Robin Hewitt]

Come on, don't be shy, 'fess up, what's the tolerance and finish like? :naughty:

Tell me I haven't been wrong all these years about the need for lots of cast iron

I'll even go first with a pic, iron cut .001" deeper than intended, biro tip for scale.

[Jonathan]

Wow, that's a sharp corner! Have to try that on my mill ...

[HiltonSteve]

Come on, don't be shy, 'fess up, what's the tolerance and finish like? :naughty:

Tell me I haven't been wrong all these years about the need for lots of cast iron

I'll even go first with a pic, iron cut .001" deeper than intended, biro tip for scale.

Robin, I don't think your wrong about the need for lots of cast iron for a solid machine, I did my apprenticeship at British Rail (a few years back!) and spent a good chunk of my time in the heavy machine shop operating a Noble & Lund plano mill. Bed was about 10m long x 4m wide and the whole machine must have weighed about 100-130 tonnes, 5mm depth of cut with a 15" face mill no problem at all and a nice finish, but you could still find the limits of the machine when you pushed it.

As for my mini plano mill!, I did not expect it to turn out as good as it did if I'm honest and I am not expecting miracles from it. Accuracy on the 30mm holes that I put in the plate was fairly good, measured them on the X and Y plane and they are 29.94 and 29.97 so slightly oval but not too bad. Finish could be a bit better but I just roughed them out, will have a go tonight with a 0.5mm finish cut climb milling to see how it performs and post up some pics.

[Robin Hewitt]

Accuracy on the 30mm holes that I put in the plate was fairly good, measured them on the X and Y plane and they are 29.94 and 29.97 so slightly oval but not too bad.

Fairly good?

One or two thousandths of an inch out and he's complaining :whistling:

PS: Climb milling sounds like a terrible idea

[HiltonSteve]

I have been profiling a couple of 20mm aluminium router sideplates at the weekend and been playing with different speeds and feeds to see find out what works best and gives the best finish.

Ended up at around 4000rpm with a feedrate of 600mm/min with a 2 fulte HSS slot drill, roughed the profile first stepping down 2mm at a time and leaving 0.5mm on all round, then did 2 finish pass's at 10mm deep with the same cutter but dropped the feedrate to 350mm/min, cutting time around 45 mins.

Finish is OK but still room for improvement, i have a couple of ali-master 10mm cutters which have completely different geometry to a standard slot drill so may give that a go to see if it improves the finish.

But overall still quite happy with the results!!

[Jonathan]

I don't fancy cleaning up the machine after that!

I was also experimenting a bit on friday with feedrates on 20mm aluminium plate. I'm using a nearly new 20mm 4 flute HSS cutter. With a maximum cut width of roughly 5mm (plate was allmost to size, just machining the edges), stepdown of 2mm and 2150 RPM I found 720mm/min to be good. It would go faster, but I'm only putting the cutting fluid on with a brush and I didn't want to push it...

For finishing I tried various speeds still at 2150rpm. I left 0.5mm for the finishing pass and did one 20mm deep climb milling pass. I couldn't really see any improvement in finish below 300mm/min, so I stuck with that.

On the first of the attached photos you can see the difference between accidently running the finish pass at 600 compared to <300.