Building My First CNC Router, Looking for Advice & Other Info

[AlexDoran]

Hi guys, had some time recently to get some more done on the router. I had to get it out of the office and onto the shop floor so made a makeshift bench for it, it weighs about 80kg and is pretty sturdy, i bolted the router to the bench using M8 T Bolts.





With that done i set to work on the aluminium plates, i ended up purchasing the stock from the Aluminium Warehouse, i started with the most basic 5mm thick plates. It went pretty well, i tried to look at a feed / speed calculator to get a rough starting point but all of them were in inches or didn't actually give me the data i needed, i think i need to hit the books a bit more on that. I didn't purchase any additional tooling as i had a few 5mm Twin Flute Carbide tools sitting around, these seem to perform ok but are terrible at plunging and are very difficult to keep cool with air, i ended up running at 16,000RPM & 1m/min with cut depths of 1mm - as the machine is the opposite of rigid this seemed to "work" but is clearly not correct as a lot of heat was generated and i had to stop mid way through one plate as the spindle sounded as if it was going to stall!







https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iU3ciLg19es

I'm looking for some advice on what tooling i should be using, how to calculate the correct speeds & feeds etc.

Should i be reducing the entire stock to achieve the part, as opposed to simply cutting out the part from the stock?

I watched one video where the guy drilled holes prior to pocketing, is this a good way approach plunging? Or is the a better / correct way to do this.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks