Quote Originally Posted by corkcnc View Post
Just wondering why you didn't climb mill the 5mm pockets in the vid. Don't take this as a criticism as I bow down to your ability to self build such a nice looking machine. You would find yourself with a longer tool life though if you did all of the 5mm in one pass and cut the pocket using 30% step over. You could increase the feedrate then due to the chip thining so you would have a nice increase in material removal rate. I understand that you are not looking to lash off 1000 pieces so time probably isn't a bit deal but it would be better to let the whole tool wear a fraction than the bottom 2mm wear while the top section does no work.
Regarding speeds and feeds calculators I have a nice .xls file which I got from my tooling supplier. When I read the figures that came out first, I said no way, surely the tool can't handle it but they do. It gives you a range of speeds for carbide and hss tools, which is useful, as if you want to apply it to different brands of tools you can put in the lowest settings and still be in the ball park for things like stainless. Then you can speed up if the conditions allow. If anyone wants a copy just pm me and I'll send it on. One important point though is that I have a rigid NC bridgeport and home made machines wouldn't be expected to have the same rigidity so carbide tooling may not be suitable at high feed rates if vibration is an issue.
Regarding tool paths I'n keen to see how m_c gets on with generating trocoidal paths with cambam. If the software can do that for under £100 it sounds like a great deal. I use trocoidal all the time and cringe when I have to put a tool into a corner when the rads limit my options.
Rgds,
Noel.
Hi Noel,

At that point I needed the parts off of the machine without mishap, as they had to go on the race car as one of the first bits of assembly, as they sit between the monocoque and the front sub-frame (replacing bonded ali and silly putty....I mean rubber OEM parts ;-) ). I also had limited amounts of 40mm 6082, so I needed safety and the machine was not long up and running at that stage. Conventional was quieter and I figured less stressful than climb, but I do use both these days and I hear you on the wear at the tip, but I have managed to tune my F&S's, using GWizard's help, to the point where (touching wood) I'm getting much better tool usage than I used to.