Need Help!- Machining Sterling Silver

[Exodus8931]

anyone machined sterling silver before, i'm looking for speeds and feeds to start with,,

i'm going to be using 1/2 endmill for roughing, probably diamond coated, and 1/4 ball for finish, also diamond coated,

i'll look for your input, thanks

[sti2011]

Can I have the chips?.................I have turned it before but not milled it. If I had to point you in a direction, it is a little like 6063 Alum. soft and gummy. I think that if you treat it that way you'll be good. I'm assuming that you are not milling huge amounts of it and if you are, I definetly want the scrap! Although when you think about it, there are engineered plastics out there that dwarf Gold in cost by weight.

[draughted]

what are you doing anyway?
please could you look into wax investment casting and save the planet!

[Exodus8931]

Originally Posted by sti2011 Can I have the chips?.................I have turned it before but not milled it. If I had to point you in a direction, it is a little like 6063 Alum. soft and gummy. I think that if you treat it that way you'll be good. I'm assuming that you are not milling huge amounts of it and if you are, I definetly want the scrap! Although when you think about it, there are engineered plastics out there that dwarf Gold in cost by weight.

lol, i know, we are going to put in some fine screen mesh, to catch as much as possible, thanks for your info thou, that's what i was figuring, i was going to cut it like 6061 maybe 10% - 20% slower

[Exodus8931]

Originally Posted by draughted what are you doing anyway? please could you look into wax investment casting and save the planet!

i can't say what, it's confidential, but the part is abbout 1" x 1" x 12.25"

can't cast it, too much fine detail on it, they tried, i machined it out of alum and stailess before, so they can see the diffrence between cast and machine,

and its huge,

save which planet, mars ???????????? lol

[awerby]

That's mostly used for cutting abrasive materials like graphite and fiberglass, which wear down the tooling. Sterling mills a lot like aluminum - it's "grabby", but it's a bit harder. I'd experiment with a copper rod to start with; if your speeds and feeds work on copper, they'll work on silver. A cobalt-steel tool will be sharper and less brittle than diamond-coated carbide, not to mention cheaper.

But I also agree with the folks who told you to cast it, not try to carve it out of a solid rod. If you mill it out of wax rod, you can pull a rubber mold from that which will transfer all your detail. Then you can cast a hollow wax, which will cast better than a solid one, while saving a lot of $17/oz silver. Just trying to recycle all that silver swarf is going to be more hassle than not spraying it all over in the first place...

Andrew Werby
www.computersculpture.com

[Exodus8931]

thanks for all the infor form you guys, i don't know y the customer dosent want to have it casted, better for my company i guess, lol,

thanks