Aluminum Machining Marks

[RichCournoyer (Richard Cournoyer)]

Question and a statement:

Do you have the new Z motor plate or the OLD style?

Link to the new one:

A Review of the New Shapeoko - Z-Axis Plate

As you may know, I am a BIG fan of cutting metal on my Shapeoko 3, but almost immediately after receiving my S3 (October 2015), I realized that the Z Axis plate was not going to be able to take the stress of cutting metal greater then about 0.010" deep. In fact, traveling along the Y Axis, my machine develop a harmonic pogo effect causing the spindle to jump nearly a 16th of an inch, and then destroy the end mill. Unfortunately there didn’t appear to be any off-the-shelf option to fix this pro…

Cheap end mills (usually) perform poorly, regardless of the coating.