UHMW Polyethylene

[Eric Nelson]

Does anyone have any feed rates and RPM speeds for machining UHMW Plastic? I bought several larges plates and 7 chunks of rod stock from Garland Manufacturing, and it seems to ribbon rather than chip, so material removal is a little tricky with the door closed.

The website is at http://www.garlandmfg.com/plastics/products.html if anyone can give me any pointers. Onsrud Cutter has a good listing of speeds and rakes, but since they sell their own stuff, I'd rather get a second opinion.

Anyone?

[DareBee]

I find it cuts best with HSS ground to a very positive cut angle.
RPM doesnt make much difference except in the speed of project completion.
Should use a high feed rate - min rate = roughing cut in steel.
It is next to impossible to skim a few thou off. I try to keep my finishing pass to about 0.020

[Rekd]

UHMW, (Ultra High Molecular Weight) is easy to cut with just about any tooling. Use lower RPMs and higher feed rates, (big chip loads)

Drilling requires small steps with fast feeds to reduce melting. The trick is to get most of the heat out with the chips.