machining Aluminium Tips?

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Originally Posted by Zeeflyboy

Feed is way too slow for that RPM imo.

Try a feed of 1000mm/min with around 12,000 rpm and an axial engagement (again, found in the 4th tab) of 0.8mm... these chinese machines are a little ropey so play around with the rpm to find one that sounds better and doesn't cause resonance in the machine.

Don't use TIAIN coated end mills in aluminium... the aluminium nitride causes the aluminium you are cutting to weld to the cutting edge. You can probably see where the coating has turned silvery already - that's your alu ending itself to the cutter.

Much better just to use uncoated carbide and a good mist coolant.

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Thank you. Ill have a play with the settings. Here are my settings for the current part i was practising on.

Attachment 24259

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Originally Posted by dfox1787

Thank you. Ill have a play with the settings. Here are my settings for the current part i was practising on.

Attachment 24259

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Yeah so I would reduce that optimal load down to something around 0.8mm and increase your maximum step down to the tool diameter to start with (so 4mm here). This will engage more of the cutter length but reduce the amount it's trying to move into the part on each pass. The way you have it set up currently it's the bottom 0.5mm of the tool that will be doing all the cutting and you'll wear it out much more quickly.

Keep the optimal load low as this will help with your lack of rigidity. I rarely use anything more than 1mm on my machine which is a 6040 with linear rails.

If doing slot type clearing like in your video, try selecting "both ways" from the milling direction drop down. It means you aren't wasting time with a travel move each time it goes across the slot and can save a lot of time on those sort of operations. Just make sure you are leaving eg 0.2mm stock in the radial direction and then run a clean up contour to finish the edge.