slotting aluminum strap

[zane]

Hello everyone, thanks for letting me lurk for so long. most of what I have learned about machining has been from this site but I have finnally found a problem I need some help with. My material is 6061, 1"x3/16" and 6ft long. I need to slot it lengthwise on both the thin sides 1/16" wide and 5/16" deep.

I have a benchtop CNC mill but only doing 6" sections at a time in my vise would be painful. The slot width has a wide tolerance range so I found a skill saw blade that was .0675 thick so I tryed it on a table saw with a fence on both sides of the stock but the blade would walk back and forth and start to weld to the aluminum.

Any great ideas? I have 6 lengths to do so I need to come up with something. To bad extrusions aren't cheeper for small runs. Thanks again!

[Cutchips]

I have cut sheet metal with a skill saw blade, but ran it with the blade backwards. Worked well. Good luck!
Manufacturing BUILDS America.

[M250cnc]

Zane

Use the table saw principal on the mill.

You will use a slitting saw and coolant

YOU must make a securely mounted fixture that positions the strip but allows controlled manual feed through the fixture.

HTH
Phil

[zane]

my mill is fully enclosed so manual feed wouldn't be very easy. I thought about adding adjustible cam followers to both the sides of the blade in the table saw set up to keep the blade from flexing as well as followers on the material fences to keep the material tight while allowing it to be fed though easily. Any idea what would work better as far as tooth count on a 6-1/2" blade? I think I tried with a 40 but it seemed to load up.