Steveo290,
Give John Grimsmo a shout, he probably has some good advice to share.
Welcome to the Zone,
Jeff...
Hi guys,
I am part way through my G0704 CNC conversion and am looking to start figuring out some tooling. This is my first adventure into the world of machining so please excuse me for the forum sins that I may be committing. I have searched about this topic for the last week and could not find anything that seemed to answer my question to my satisfaction.
One of the things that I wanted to do with this CNC machine was mill some knife handles out of G10 and carbon fiber which would be from somewhat thin sheets. I know that diamond coated endmills are the best for this but they are pricey and look to require some pretty high speeds which the stock spindle on my machine cannot deliver, max speed is ~2200. Delamination is the highest priority as I can live with a long cycle time that I would think come with not being able to spin the endmill fast.
Has anyone had experience doing what I am looking to do? I was also hoping to get some links to products.
Thank you for any help you guys can give.
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Steveo290,
Give John Grimsmo a shout, he probably has some good advice to share.
Welcome to the Zone,
Jeff...
Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.
Hi,
I've been machining performance composites for quite a long time now. Diamond tools are not necessary for your application. You can get a good result with the right geometry of tool rather than focussing on the coating of the tool. High end tools are for production applications. Start with something similar to the burr style offered by Garr in their 700 series.
In machining we should talk in terms of cutting speed and feed per tooth, if you're max RPM is 2200 you need to use a larger diameter to try and keep the cutting speed up. I would suggest a 10mm cutter and 2200 RPM (2500 would be optimal for this diameter). Then for the burr type feed at about 400mm/min and experiment with more or less based on what sounds right / minimal vibration. Extract that dust! Not just for the health reasons, but to remove heat from the cutter. Depth of cut will be driven by how rigid your machine is. That cutter can take up to about 10mm DOC under the right conditions through CFRP but if your on a light weight machine you will need to limit the depth to about 1mm at a time.
Believe it of not I get the best results from the cheap carbide tipped router bits you can get at any hardware store and a low RPM. My first CNC was slow so that's how I did it and made hundreds of CF and G10 parts. One benefit of this is you don't get the dust like you do with a high speed spindle. The bits are cheap, and are straight so no delam.