@Bob
Thanks for the advise, I will be looking into runout.
Even when doing 10mm roughing/finishing I have yet to get a really decent finish, but of course there are other factors I need to consider too.
When we spoke to the Syil distributor in UK, we sent them image of the types of tools that we wanted to produce and even went and visited a local user, all said our parts were simple and should be no problem. As a complete noob to CNC, we put our trust in Syil and it was them that recommended that ER40 was the best for applications. However, knowing what I know now, ER40 is perhaps not the best solution, more so on the small end mills as we most of our work is going to be using 1.5mm drills and 1, 2, 5mm end mills. Maybe its a bit harsh, but I think we were seen coming.
For tool paths, we are just using a plunge, at the moment.
When I started looking at CAM solutions, we wanted something that would integrate into Solidworks. I tried lots of software, open source, free and subscription based too and have a spreadsheet of them all.
BobCAM are VERY aggressive on sales and dropped their price by over 50% to get the sale. In hind site, was it the best purchase? maybe not. When they did the demo, they used our supplied SW file and it looked a breeze. It wasn't a perfect demonstration in terms of click, click, click done but I wasn't expecting it to be. We used a local training BobCAD trainer, who had a very good training guide, but was just reluctant to teach based on our application. When we did get him to try, he struggled to get some tool paths to create and had no idea why. There were months of going back to him and BobCAM to get support, unfortunately, all BobCAD were interested in were trying to sell us their extended support and training.
Anyway, they finally gave in and did a live support call and even they had issues getting it too work and this just uses simple pocketing and some drilling routines.
The expectation that BobCAM could be used straight away on our part was torn apart. We now have to add a bunch of additional planes and boundary sketches to get it to create paths. Luckily for us, we built an awesome app which builds our tools in seconds based on just a couple of dimensions.
So, as it stands, we got BobCAM to produce tools paths but had to move to the next stage of making the resultant gcode work through MACH to our Syil
Reliance/assurance that the default milling parameters in BobCAM we sufficient have also taken a battering.
I appreciate that I now need to move further and perhaps choose better milling routines like spiralling to reduce stress.
I certainly learnt that trying to drill 26mm deep in this material with a 1.5mm drill bit in one pass just does not work and pecking at 2mm steps seems to work much better.
For cutting fluid, I was finding that although it appeared to be working, it was also causing chips to collect after ejecting and without a constant air supply to clear them, it was actually have a negative effect in comparison to running the same job dry (on a 10mm rough)
As for material, its a face palm moment.
The decision was made to purchase a bunch of blanks for us to use, from China
Although they are specified as T6 6061, in reality they could be anything. The old addage you get what you pay for rings true.
I have found a new single flute in a box of old bits, so I will certainly give that a go.
Appreciate your feedback.
Simon