It's begun....

[Washout]

Hi All,
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An update, a couple of pics and once Youtube has done its thing a video, which I'll edit into here with the link later.
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Firstly the pics below are a sub-frame mounting bush, which on the normal road car is an ali and rubber affair and in order to increase stiffness on the track are being replaced by these. This is just a roughing pass mostly - the finished bits being the counter-bored hole in the centre, the bottom half which is all 2D stuff and the M8 tapped mounting holes. So this is a bit of a milestone, as its the first proper part to come off of the machine apart from the L-shaped jig so the part can be flipped for 2 sided machining.
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The warts as I see them are a few ledges here and there where the machine lost steps, due to a bent ball-screw, which I am replacing, general chatter marks, which I should normally clean up with a finishing pass, but as this is going to be buried far from sight won't do unless my customer insists on paying extra for a run over with a ball nose mill ;-).
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Other bits I am intrigued about is the pretty pattern on the top which is very regular and I'm guessing is feed or speed related?
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Also once you guys can see the video, I am running what was to be a kind of pocketing pass to cut the part out, but it was such a faff I stopped that and just went for a slotting cut out path. Also the path you can see there hopefully shows the machine behaving nicely when slotting and chattering away when cutting on one edge (using climb is worse) and for info this is 6082 ali with an 8mm HSS end mill @ 10000rpm, 1mm DoC, 800mm/min and ramping over 10mm combined with a 600mm/min plunge (seems to be the sweet spot for my machine so far).
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The path was also being run after I had done the bore and two pockets, so there is a fair amount of air cutting going on, but hopefully shows a variety of behaviour.
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Once I have replaced the bent ball-screw and hopefully resolved the stalling/missing steps issue, I'm going to have to play about with the machine as the ease at, which it slots seems to indicate I should be increasing my step over when pocketing/profiling (currently 20% or 1.6mm) or increasing DOC, as the machine actually seems happier when going a bit more aggressive.
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I'm also exploring other CAD/CAM options, as whilst Vectric is OK, there are anomalies like the path in the video, which ramped on most, but not all plunges and driving the mill in the Z axis @ 600mm/min beats the snot out of the machine/tool, as does a too shallow or slow ramp for that matter. Having a teenage daughter could prove useful for a change, if I/she can get educational licences for stuff like Solidworks (I don't think SolidCAM do educational, as I would love to try their iMachining stuff) - its about time she started paying her way anyway ;-)
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Before I forget I have also got suspicious about the ZPA5-INT board, so for a few quid more have ordered a controller recommended by Dean in another thread (can't remember the name of it), so will report on that once I have it fitted and it looks like an almost drop in replacement for the current BoB.
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More when I get the time (Christmas vacation is almost upon me so hopefully not too long) and I have at least 3 more of these parts to make, so will try and get a longer video up next time.
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Later
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Chris