How much of a bite should it make each pass? To cutout a small circle it is marking 6 passes with an 1/8 inch bit and 5mm thick Luann. It took it almost 30 minutes is this good? Or can I speed it up?
GWizard suggests a carbide .125" end mill through ‘hard plastic’ would work well with .0745" depth per pass, rpm of ~22000 (think this is a 5 on the dewalt, or 4, one below max) and a feedrate of ~55ipm. I assumed you’re meant a perimeter cut not a pocket?
Yes parameter cut, Luann is a thin plywood type. I am new to this machine and need to figure out how to come up with these figures, so I don’t bother everyone! Most of my cuts will be paremeter.
LUAN! Damnit I was thinking Lexan. .08" DOC and it says 100ipm but I never run my shapeoko that fast. There’s a 100+ post thread here where I worked through quality issues and I think the biggest takeaway is lots of fast shallow passes are better than a few slower deeper passes.
GWizard calculator is the way to go. The licensing is strange, it’s ~$70 or so for the first year, but after having subscribed for a year you get 1HP forever. The dewalt router is 1.25HP so if you subscribe for a second year you then have a lifetime license for 2HP which is more than enough. It’s not cheap but if you value your time it pays for itself VERY quickly. Jobs that the carbide create defaults would have take an hour can be done in half the time or less. Their settings are very ‘safe’ but your circle shouldn’t take more than a few minutes with these settings.
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Also the UI is a bit … untidy, but lots of useful information. Don’t be overwhelmed, for 90% of cuts I just set the tool type to carbide end mill, set the cut width to slot for slotting, or the stepover amount if it’s a pocket, hit the little button next to Cut Depth and let it figure out the rest.
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I will have to look Into investing into this! I have some 1/16 and 1/32 endmills on there way so I will need this!
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I have to study this thing more I do not know what all the settings mean since this is my first machine. I need to figure out ateprate and speeds and feeds!