Aluminum 1100-F Tips?

[John Morris]

Anyone have experience machining any Aluminum 1100-F (I don't)? I understand it to be almost pure with no hardness, extremely gummy and stringy. We have to turn some cone shapes and maybe do some surface milling. Any tips or tricks would be appreciated.

 

Thanks

[Sbarner]

Yes John. Lots of experience with 1100 here. I make panels for the compact pulsed power machine here at WSU. Basically, these panels get roughly 4 million amps through them to generate a mechanical "shock" wave without impacting the part. I digress...

 

1100 is an extreme pain to machine. Don't count on a quality finish. You'll have a smooth surface, but no luster to it. I've had luck with both High speed and carbide tools, but for production, I used carbide.

 

I checked my programs and I was running a 1/2" 3 flute carbide at 7500 RPM (our Haas mill max) and 40 ipm. Depth of cut was .08 and stepover was .200. I recommend a helix entry to any pockets as the tool will leave a plunge mark if it's plunged directly into the material.

 

I suppose these are the best tips I can give you. I know they work OK for me, as I had to hold .0005 parallelism and .0005 flatness, along with + 0.0000, -.0005 for size tolerance. Piece of cake.

 

Hope that helps.