Fly cutter/tooling for the 2.2kw spindles

[Lee Roberts]

Thanks mate,

I was actually thinking more along the line of something proper like in this pic, with the right shank for the collets:



Looking into it more it looks like allot of people just make up their own design/holder for the type of cutter they want to use:





I guess it's something I can look at once it's up and running, a lathe by then maybe nice/handy too. If I decide to make my own that is, I'll keep looking :).

.Me

[Lee Roberts]

This one on ebay dosnt look to bad at £9 : http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/152127908978

A better buy: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/162124411254

.Me

[cropwell]

Lee,

The trouble with fly cutters is balance. An out of balance cutter at 10,000 rpm will shorten the life of the spindle bearings. Something like this http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/6mmx30mm-C...8AAOSwbYZXVoPY will be better. It's called a bottom cleaner, but......

Rob

[Gary]

Tried it on aly with a proper fly cutter and found it hard getting over 4Krpm and at that speed the spindle will stall very easily.

[routercnc]

Hi Lee,

For wood the wealdon tool would be fine. I've used 18mm 2 flute carbide tipped cutters with no issues on wood. I'm sure you could go higher.

But I think for skimming aluminium the flycutter styles pictured above would be hard on the spindle bearings with the interrupted cut, and you would need to run at a high rpm (due to the limited torque) which would be way too fast for the surface speed. I've not tried this, just my thoughts on it.

If you do make/buy a flycutter style tool I'd be tempted to keep the radius down. Larger radius also amplifies any out of tram on the spindle.

My method is a 6mm 2 flute carbide and lots of patience. If you are going for the 2.2kW then you can go up to ~12mm.