Machining alumimium

[axus]

Hi
Sorry if I am posting in the wrong forum.
I am new to any form of machining and helping my grandson with a project.
We have cast an aluminium round plate 52mm thick and need to make 6mm cuts all round to form a gear.
The tools I have are limted to a router, hacksaw and angle grinder.
Which would you recommend me to do please, drill series of holes then hacksaw them out, grind them out with the angle grinder or what would you suggest.
Many thanks

Keith

[ColdCnc]

Hi Axus
I run a small plasma table for a small but rapidly growing custom metal shop. And the best advice I can give you is to lay out the project first on a piece of scrap of cardboard, measure and mark out center on your holes and the cut it out of the scrap/card board to make sure every thing works. then I would take it to a metal fab shop with a cutting table. at my shop customers that supply there own metal and have laid out there own design, it takes all of 15 min to scan and cut. We would charge about $15 and up depending on size. if you want to do it your self, cut the holes first.

Hope this helps

[axus]

Sounds like a brilliant idea, and much safer. I will give it a go
Thanks
Keith

[metalworkz]

Originally Posted by axus Hi Sorry if I am posting in the wrong forum. I am new to any form of machining and helping my grandson with a project. We have cast an aluminium round plate 52mm thick and need to make 6mm cuts all round to form a gear. The tools I have are limted to a router, hacksaw and angle grinder. Which would you recommend me to do please, drill series of holes then hacksaw them out, grind them out with the angle grinder or what would you suggest. Many thanks Keith

Hi Keith,
I would 2nd the advice above to layout the part, but would also suggest you layout the actual part with some Dykem, Prussian Blue or something that will stain the aluminum so all of your layout will be visable. Then I think if you drill a hole in the center you will be able to use this to locate the gear blank so as to spin it with the center line of the holes to be drilled lined up with your drill or router so that this dimension will be held. After you have holes started around the perimeter you can even set up a pin stop and use it to locate off of the holes that you have drilled.
Then it is a matter of spinning the blank so the center punches are aligned, clamp the blank and drill the hole. Repeat until the holes are all drilled(routed). The remaining portion between each tooth of the gear can removed either with the hacksaw or routed out. If the router is used you can probably figure a way to fixture it so as to make a setup similar to the drilling jig and use a carbid or carbide tipped bit to rout the spaces. After saying this with a little thought you could rig a setup so as to rout the spaces out completely in several passes for each space. Good luck and I hope I have helped somehow!

[M250cnc]

Hi Keith,

I would suggest asking for a quote in the RFQ section.

If you are new to milling/routing you risk serious injury if the part fly s off when routing using a cutter that is doing 20,000rpm.

Even experienced operators have accidents you are almost guaranteed one sorry to be so negative.

Phil_H

[axus]

That is fine, I was apprehensive about attempting it. I am going to mark it up and take it to a local engineering shop for a quote.
Thanks everyone
Keith

[metalworkz]

Hi Keith,
I did not take the safety aspects into consideration when I replied last night, and after reading Phils post I have to confer that perhaps it would be better doing as he said. I hope you are able to get it done at a reasonable cost, but it is not reasonable if someone gets hurt. Take care.