Questions on using a moving gantry style mini-mill...

[Davek0974]

Been digging through the cutter drawer, found loads of 3mm carbide 3 flutes, some 4.5mm and 5mm 3 flute cobalts as well plus a 2.5mm cobalt.

I isolated some of the features on my part and run them in the scrap from yesterday - i hate wasting metal ;)

I also tweaked the F & S sliders in HSMAdvisor to suit my machine rpm and also a lower feed-rate (i had not done this yesterday so it was running full production rates or at least trying).

Using the 5mm 3-flute and a 3mm 3-flute, plus the modified coolant (much better with nozzle cut off) I set some different paths and all seemed ok, 1mm DOC was quite happy on the 5mm with 30% step-over
on the pockets, the 3mm was ramped down to a full 5mm cut at 0.1mm deep and that seemed ok too, the end result...



4 perfectly cut features. I even got a bit of video.. https://youtu.be/uIuylK4Y7qs

Annoying bit is that I can't try cutting a real job as the job is designed for 2mm finish tooling and it fails in CAM if i try using the 2.5mm cutter so I will have to wait until new cutters arrive now.

I think the single flutes will do well - lots of chip clearance and slower feeds. I have also re-cammed the job for full cut + 0.05mm and added some tabs, it will be cut on a 0.3mm spacer sheet.