Machined Aluminium Is the New Injection Molded Plastic
After 2 days of spending almost every waking hour with my new mistress, Esmerelda, I've learned a few things:
-Always choose the softest material that will do the job. I'm using some harder 6061 Al when a softer alloy would have saved time, tool life and actually work better in its application.
-Watch the direction of feed. The cutting head should make contact with the material opposite the direction of the feed, otherwise you are asking for trouble.
-One can't have enough different clamping options. It's like Ben says, the difference between a pleasant machining experience and a lousy day is the proper clamp.
I need to order a few end mills, clamps and machinists squares from Shars, but CK didn't need those new shoes anyway.
posted by nate @ 12:36 PM
4 Comments:
good link on the feed direction, I realize my explanation was totally inadequate, except to let you know about the chatter problem.
Definantly want to use the wimpy material.
I knew you had given me the heads up on all of those.
The local metal supermarket has mostly 6061 in stock, but it's not too bad.
The issue of 'back milling,' I think is relative cutter speed, kinda like the Doppler effect. There is a proportionate reduction in feedrate, probably, that would allow for smooth cutting in this mode. 'Wimpy,' is needlessly perjorative. T-6 is just hard, that's all, fairly, in another context, its inelasticity is 'wimpy.' Forging is interesting. If the likely axis of stress is known, heat and pressure are brought to bear to arrange the crystal structure of the Al. This doesn't mitigate 'wimpiness,' just de-orthogonalizes it. Metal is rich (bold as brass) in metaphor. So are SMPSs.
"speedy metals" has more stock than metal supermarket, but you's have to deal with them through the mail as they are in Wisconsin. You can request their catalog through ebay.
Post a Comment
<< Home