Feed Rates and cutters for wood panels

[Shinobiwan]

Your going to need a beefy machine to do 19mm in one pass at 6m. I wouldn't fancy doing that with 6mm tool either! Cut quality would be shite with all the chatter and that's if it didn't snap. 10mm would be where I'd want to be at really.

[jimbo_cnc]

OK, so that was a bad thing for me to mention as a requirement to the supplier, I'm correcting that now.

I have some 6mm wide grooves, and 19mm wide grooves, both about 6mm deep. I was hoping to cut the whole thing with one cutter but swapping is no biggy either.

What do you recommend if I had 3kW spindle and 6000mm/min ?

The whole job with 6mm cutter and DOC= 6mm?
or 6mm cutter for narrow grooves, 10mm for wide grooves and multi-pass for cutting the profile?

Multipass rough cut the profile, then a full depth finish pass with compression cutter?


I will be hot glue edgebanding the cut edge, and I've got a choice of chipboard or mdf for the core of the melamine board.

[Ger21]

If you need both the top and bottom edges clean, then you want to cut the profile with a compression bit.
If you can, I'd try to go up to a 4-5Kw spindle, which should let you cut the profile in one pass with a 10mm compression bit. Machine rigidity will dictate how fast you can go, but I've cut 19mm board in one pass at ~17m/min with a 10mm compression bit.

If your limited to 3Kw, then I'd probably try using a 1/4" compression bit for everything. Cut the profiles slightly oversize in 3 passes, with a final cleanup pass at full depth, removing about .5mm.

[jimbo_cnc]

Thanks for that.

I'm not limited to anything. I'm just looking for the most economic way to cut 200 boards per year.

[Ger21]

The most economical would probably be to pay someone else to cut them.

[jimbo_cnc]

The most economical would probably be to pay someone else to cut them.

It might be close if they were all the same, but say I have 10 model options. That would mean liasing and travelling to the cnc shop everytime someone orders one. That's $50 of my time IF it all goes well, plus the $100 machining fee x 50 visits = $7500 per year.

If I damage a panel later in the build process the costs and delay are horrendous if I can't just run another one off myself.

Obviously there are also many other advantages to having my own machine too, outside of the main 200 board requirement.