Cutters & Cutter Sources for Wood

[MrTomSharp]

CNC Zone Community,

My FLA-100 is almost operational; see Complete 2'x3' Router Kit : Fine Line Automation. Anyone that would like you can read my build journal (blog style from the bottom up) at Tom's CNC Project.

I am having a hard finding, or knowing, the right cutters. It seems they can be very expensive, so I don’t want to make a mistakes with my cutter purchases.

I plan on cutting mostly wood. The router (PC-892) will be capable of 5k-23k RPM with ¼”, 3/8”, & ½” collets. What cutters do you use and for what materials? Where do you get your cutters?

Thanks for any wisdom anyone can pass on.

Tom

[comandojon]

I would start off small and cheap. There Is a learning curve to the machine and the cam/cad software, my take is why screw up nice bits.

Always use solid carbide. You can get a cheap 1/4" up cut spiral at home depot for around 20 dollars. Why spend money on expensive cutters while learning? I did and it hurts to hear a $40 bit snap off .

You'll need a ball end cutter or two, a v groove bit or two maybe 60 deg.& 90 deg.

Amana has a pretty good catalog they will send you. We don't buy our day to day compression cutters from them , but have bought some of their miter fold bits and larger insert tooling heads.

One thing to get familiar with is a chip load calculator it is not perfect but a good start for feed rates, rpm and material types.

Good luck but buy cheap until you have a good feel for how things work.

Jon

[MrTomSharp]

Thank you for the information. I now have several cutters, and am starting to get a feel for the feeds and speeds. I have found that for different cutters I am often using different venders; no one-stop-shopping. The information you, comandojon, provided was of great use. Thanks again.

Tom

[louieatienza]

Thank you for the information. I now have several cutters, and am starting to get a feel for the feeds and speeds. I have found that for different cutters I am often using different venders; no one-stop-shopping. The information you, comandojon, provided was of great use. Thanks again.

Tom

I buy a few Amana bits; one distributor (toolstoday.com) is about 1-1/2 hours from my house and I get deliveries next day via UPS. Their prices are pretty reasonable too. Their Timberline brand is even cheaper.

Although you can use regular wood bits successfully in a CNC, CNC specific wood bits have larger clearances and more aggressive cutting geometries. Thus I wouldn't recommend using some CNC bits in a handheld router, since they may not offer anti-kickback protection. On a CNC this isn't a problem. You may have to go a tad slower feedrate or higher rpm with bits intended for handheld use, as the anti-kickback design limits it's radial depth of cut (i.e. stepover)

LMT/Onsrud has a huge selection of tools for different materials. A bit (no pun intended) pricier, but I feel better quality than Amana (onsrud.com)