It's begun....

[Washout]

Another update on progress and again machining rather than building the machine, even though I have upgrades queued up waiting for some time.

Anyway, I have a paying customer now and even though my machine is still in the later stages of build he's an understanding sort, so I'm doing my best to oblige. So the pic attached are the result of a few 2D operations -
1. was a 0.2mm facing pass to get rid of the "texture" on the aluminium plate (40mm thick 6082 T651)
2. was a pocketing operation to do the hole in the centre
3. was the pocketing/profiling operation (on one side only at this stage)

All were programmed in Vectric Cut2D and this is where some "fun" started - my machine for some reason likes to mill when running in a clockwise direction in a pocket, which I think is conventional milling i.e. the spindle is running clockwise as you look down on it from the top. My understanding however is that climb milling should be better?

Also another observation is that compared to climb milling around the edges of a pocket my machine actually seems to like doing slotting better?

All 3 operations above were using a conservative 1mm DOC @ 10000rpm @ 800mm/min using an 8mm 2 Flute HSS End Mill-

I think I can go much more aggressive in DOC but I do have an issue with getting the chip out of the pockets at deeper than about 10mm - I probably need a more powerful compressor or wing at on blown air alone rather than the heavy mist I'm currently using, which tends to pool cutting fluid/water/chips mix in the corners and bottom of my pockets. Shallower cutting is great as the chip are getting thrown out nicely.

The results of the main pass and facing is a little rough, but I guess that's why its called a roughing pass. The centre hole pocket is much better.

I will eventually get some more video once I can trust the machine to run on its own on an operation without me brushing out chips and generally hovering about the thing watching.

Cheers


Chris