Recommend End Mill for 4000RPM Max CNC Mill Cutting 6061 Auminum
Looking for aluminum cutting end mills for my machine. Most of the fancy aluminum cutters I seem to find are carbide and want mega RPM according to the specs. I am not sure if I can use these.
My machines original limits were 3600RPM. It is now 4k with the VFD.
I am looking for a recommendation on what cutters I should be looking at for aluminum. So far I have just been using some standard HSS 2 flute cheep Chinese end mills. Now that I am actually able to make a part I would like to purchase some higher quality cutters to see what they can do and also because I only have one of each size and will need more.
I am not sure if I need a roughing cutter and a regular cutter or if one of the fancier ones will work as both. There are a lot of choices out there, but if I need to forget about carbide, that will narrow it down for sure. I was leaning towards getting 3 flute.....
Re: Recommend End Mill for 4000RPM Max CNC Mill Cutting 6061 Auminum
I recently went through this myself and did a good bit of research. Most of the end mills I already had were cheapie imports, but I did have some good name brand HSS mills and some carbide from when I was manual machining, but they were really not performing on the CNC. I tried some 1/2" Promax 109 series ZRN coated 3 flute carbide end mills on my Bridgeport conversion at 2,500 RPM and I could not believe the metal removal rate I was getting. I have never seen chips flying off like that before. I just ordered $500 more of them in various sizes yesterday and they are now my go to mills.
They are also recommended for high speeds, but there is no reason you can't use them at lower speeds as long as you pay attention to the chip load. I also recently got GWizard to compute my feeds and speeds and I also highly recommend it. At least download the trial and try it out.
Here is the link to the mills on the Promax web site. 3 Flute for Aluminum ? Series 109 - PROMAX Tools If you go to the MSC web site and look at their metalworking sales flyer you will also find them. Pay attention to the prices because MSC has about half of them a little under the list price on the Promax site, but then they have some sizes that are almost twice the price. I emailed them that they had a price error and they tell me that is correct, but they did send me a quote to match the prices.
Re: Recommend End Mill for 4000RPM Max CNC Mill Cutting 6061 Auminum
Just as high speed spindles need fewer or even single edge flutes, slower spindles can benefit from multiple flutes.
I would use 3 flute bits. I get good results using .003" chipload with 1/4" endmills in 7000 series aluminum. At 3600ipm and 3 flutes that works out to about 32ipm, not too bad. Adjust depth according to your machine rigidity and spindle HP... sone experimenting needed. If you don't have flood, use a small brush to apply some WD-40 or other lubricant lightly and to brush chips away.
If you're on the East coast check out Kodiak Cutting Tools, good quality and price. I agree ZrN or TiN coatings will help.
Re: Recommend End Mill for 4000RPM Max CNC Mill Cutting 6061 Auminum
I have a couple of Alu-power mills I got from Ebay, but have not tried them yet. I have not seen them with the ZRN coating which should make a big difference. Where did you get yours and did you get any coating on them? Let us know how they work.