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

[HiltonSteve]

Been playing with my machine again trying to get aluminium to cut nice and...

John, you were right. (No suprise there then! )

Tried a few different methods of profiling some 2mm aluminium sheet and came to the conclusion that slower is better with these 3 flute cutters that I have.

After various speeds and welding some ali to a 3mm cutter (is there an easy way to get it off without breaking the tool??) I ended up with the kress set on 1 and cutting at 100mm/min with a full 2mm cut straight through the plate, started chipping lovely, gave it a squirt of wd40 and vacuumed the chips up now and again.

I believe that any reasonably built router will be capable of cutting ali with the right speeds and feeds as the cutting forces are very low.

I think I will be able to go a bit quicker with the 2 flute ali master cutters that I have ordered but I will let you know tomorrow.

So here is a photo of my new Z axis sideplate.....