Precision Board is the propietary name (precisionboard.com). Machinable tooling foam for doing composite layup. Wondering if anyone had experience cutting this kinda stuff, and what kind of speed and feed to run. I'd imagine medium speed and high feed with no coolant and a shop vac on the thing.

What are the reasons? Goin with a 3 flute cutter I'd imagine you'd have a larger 'core' diameter for an overall more rigid cutter. But by the same token, going to 4 would be even more rigid, so by that token 3 should not inherently have an advantage over 2 or 4, as someone earlier was talking about. Over 2, yes.

I can't imagine why 3 flutes would reduce chatter relative to 2 or 4. The odd number shouldn't do anything, its all about the frequency of tooth strikes relative to the natural frequency of your toolholder, which is as much a function of what RPM youre running as number of teeth, unless theyre offset and not equally spaced. Think Z-carbs have that. Slick idea. That said, the sine-waving I think is describing a tool's natural frequency and how it can vibrate and the right frequency relative to how fast youre traveling to make a wavy surface finish. Tungsten carbide, being 3 times as stiff and twice as dense as steel, I'd think would have a tendency to have natural resonant frequencies much higher than your regular HSS cutter. Thus, easier to vibrate at high frequencies, albeit the amplitude is smaller. But hell. What do I know.

I'd second horsepowered and a bit more aggressive feed. It's gotta bite. Usually half the speed, twice the feed of the drill works pretty well.

Intuitively, given how much softer/gummier aluminum is and can be, and the wildly different thermal properties, I just feel you'd run into problems doing high feed at 750ipm in Al. But I'd be very curious to hear the real results. Edit - and yea, if you do, show us some video!!

Or by the same token, what stuff to really avoid.

Hey guys. Looks like I'm going to be writing a 'Design for Machinability' guideline booklet for next year's Manufacturing Processes/Systems class in the Mech. Engineering department here. I vaguely recall seeing some threads here talking about alternative grades of aluminum.. steel.. stainless steel.. that were much more friendly to machine (ie 6013, 6020, etc). If you know of some material like that, jot it down here. I'd be very interested in hearing about it.

The super sticky double sided tape works wonders. That and super light DOC's. I had a part I had to run a while ago, plastic (Ultem1000), 1/4" thick but milled down to 1/16" floor. Was out of tape, managed to make a custom fixture for it and bolt it in the middle in a few places, and it worked great.

Not running that deep. This was the first time I had run anything faster than 20ipm.. cuts at most like .500 radial and .175 or so axial. Definately clamped the work down solid and was running a nice ER32 collet chuck. Came out very nice.

Hey guys. Haven't been around here in a while.. For those of you who run a lot of aluminum, I'm curious what kinda tool life you get out of solid carbide tools. I'm an engineering student and do assorted machining on a campus where the nicest machines are a Hurco VM1 and Fadal 3016L (hold your laughter for a moment). Most of the 'machinists' that run the shops have old HSS tools and refuse to push a half inch tool faster than 18ipm through aluminum. Finally got some good tools here.. uncoated solid carbide, SGS and Data Flute stuff. Pushing 3/4" at about 6000rpm and 60-80ipm, which I feel is a good conservative start. I don't want to push too hard though for fear of burning these tools up. Money is TIGHT on the team I work for. So realistically, what kind of tool life can you expect milling aluminum at say 7000rpm and 90ipm?

Beats working in campus machine shops.. where relative to old beat up Milltronics that stall out facing aluminum... a Fadal 3016 is allmighty.

CATIA is by the same parent company as SolidWorks.. Dassault Systemes. Its a $45k/seat engineering package. It does pretty much everything.

Have you given a look at Harvey Tool's plastic cutting endmills? We used them for some polypropylene tubes we had to run a while ago, worked great. http://www.harveytool.com/products/product...tting+End+Mills

See what I can do...

Our reseller, Triad Machine Tools in Wheat Ridge, CO, has some solid Fadal posts. We also have a 3016. Mark Casella works there. Big time MasterCAM guru. If your reseller doesn't have what you want, you might be able to go through them to ours.