Lots of Burrs on Cutting

I’ve been using my XL for a couple of months now. I’ve tried cutting pine, MDF, and plastic boards. Using mostly the 1/4 ’ and 1/8 ’ cutter. Seems like no matter what I cut I get lots of burrs that I need to clean up manually. The 1/4 ’ cutter seems better for cutting and the 1/8 ’ cutter is the worst. Am I doing something wrong here. Any suggestions.

My beginner’s take on this after a few months:

  • pine is the trickiest to get right with minimal burrs. A downward cut endmill helps. But basically I hate milling pine and choose something else whenever I can.
  • MDF : experiment with feeds and speeds above/below the nominal values, same for depth of cut. There are sweet spots.
  • plastic: just go faster. Things got much better for me when I realized that for acrylic I need to move faster than feels comfortable, to avoid mill heating and get nice clean chips (and therefore a clean cut)

Julien

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Thanks for the reply. For plastic I am using PVC Boards from Lowes. They come in 5 1/2 and 9 1/4 width and up to 16 foot lengths and work pretty well.

Here’s one I did in PVC that came out pretty nice

2-28-2018%204-53-50%20AM

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I haven’t tried using an flat end mill on MDF yet ( since getting my SO3 ) but I have run some tests of relief jobs and V-Carves. Both came out near perfect. The V-carve was damn near perfect.

Recalling the Carbide store bits, aren’t their end mills all UPcuts? That could be an issue if you are cutting with one of those. Pine is always going to show some amount of burrs or 'fuzzies" and you will have to deal with it using a dremel and a sanding disc ( The 3M radial discs ) which work great… https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/company-us/all-3m-products/~/Scotch-Brite-Radial-Bristle-Disc/?N=5002385+3293241199&rt=rud

I haven’t tried using a ‘mask’ yet but some people place down a film before machining. OraMask 813 is the name of the most used brand if I recall… Check amazon for that, or search for a stencil mask film. It helps keep the fibers from lifting on the edge of the cut.

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Agree that V-carve + MDF gives surprisingly good results. Check out this thread…I recently carved one myself and was extremely happy with how it came out.

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