Originally Posted by
pertierr
Thank you both for the replies, this has been very useful already. I did not realize that the rigidity of the machine had such an impact, but it makes a lot of sense now that I think about it.
I did some more digging into the solution that Solidworks CAM(CAMWorks) came up with. The cut operation was effectively a slot with a 1mm cut depth on each pass and 3/16 flat 4FL HSS mill on 6061 (T651). The Solidworks CAM F&S library maxed out the spindle at 3250rpm and set the feed rate to 647mm/min (25.5 ipm). Does this seem too fast on the 770? I played around with the settings and one unexpected(to me) thing I noticed is that if I increase the cut depth arbitrarily, camworks doesn't change the feed rate.
I tried online calculators and I downloaded G-Wizard. Some online calculators give a similar estimate to camworks, others give a more conservative rate that is about half(!). For example, the FSWizard iphone app tells me 330mm/min.
G-Wizard gives 523mm/min at 'full aggressive' and 130mm/min at 'full conservative'. G-Wizard seems like a very thorough tool and I think I will keep on using it, but still that seems like such a huge range.
I guess there is no getting around just experimenting within these ranges. Does anyone use any tool in particular for the 770, for example G-Wizard and one particular aggressiveness setting? Or did you pretty much build your own spreadsheet through experimentation?