Planing Aluminium and steel

[imaneejj]

Hi everyone i’m actually new in machining ! I have a question if you can help me , I actually have some steel and aluminum blocs and I want to improve their surface to make it plan and to have the same thickness everywhere. The first idea I had is a drum sander or a wood planer , it might work with aluminum but definitely not with steel. I know that milling with fly cutter on a CN machine will work for me but it takes a lot of time and cost expensive ! I’m looking for machine that can do the job for aluminum and steel bloc

[awerby]

Those machines made for wood won't work on metals. One step up from a fly cutter is a face mill; these can have multiple insert cutters and be fairly large. But they require a fairly substantial machine to run on - more so the larger they are. Another thing you might consider is a surface grinder; these are mostly used for steel, come with magnetic hold-down beds, and can be manually operated or automatic. If this is something you need to do a lot of, you might want to send it to a machine shop with specialized equipment that can do this for you in quantity. Here's an example of a company like that: [url=http://www.euclidprecision.com/surface-grinding.html/url] The surfaces they'll deliver are better than can be achieved by milling.

[QuinnSjoblom]

For the aluminum, have you considered buying tooling plate? Atp 5 or mic 6. Its cast aluminum Blanchard ground to precise thickness and flatness, im assuming at least to the level of accuracy you need if a planer was considered. Side note, i doubt anyone's ever tried it, but i bet a helical insert planer head could possibly handle aluminum, maybe gearing changed for lower sfm. Not that I would have the balls to try sending a plate of aluminum through a planer lol.

[mactec54]

Hi everyone i’m actually new in machining ! I have a question if you can help me , I actually have some steel and aluminum blocs and I want to improve their surface to make it plan and to have the same thickness everywhere. The first idea I had is a drum sander or a wood planer , it might work with aluminum but definitely not with steel. I know that milling with fly cutter on a CN machine will work for me but it takes a lot of time and cost expensive ! I’m looking for machine that can do the job for aluminum and steel bloc

A Blanchard Grinder will do what you want drum sander won't leave a very good surface finish on aluminum unless you have special belts for aluminum and then the accuracy would not be very good as well