Noobie trying to mill aluminium with a 6040

[m_c]

I always treat slot milling as a last resort, as unless you can guarantee excellent chip clearance, it's very likely to result in chip welding, with the likely result of the cutter clogging, snapping, or even welding to the work.

What were your speeds/feeds?
And what grade is the aluminium?

Looking at the picture, you're either going too slow with not enough tooth load, and/or it's a piece of soft gummy aluminium.

[GaryWilliams]

Hi M_C,

Thanks for the quick reply. The grade of aluminium is 6002. I'll hunt through my notes for the speeds/feeds settings. I recognise the results of slot milling you describe above. I have small chippings stuck to one side of the slot and did chip one on my endmills. So instead of slot milling to save the lump of aluminium in the centre, I should just mill out the whole of the centre piece, then mill out the surplus aluminium around the outside to create the 5mm wall. What I am trying to create is a larger volume/taller rocker cover for my sons' Honda kart engine.

Update - I can't find any notes re speeds and feeds but, at the time, I was using the values calculated by the G-Wizard software.

Cheers

Gary

[EddyCurrent]

There was a good discussion here about cutting aluminium; http://www.cambam.co.uk/forum/index....54968#msg54968