I have a bunch of acrylic panels I need to produce for my flight simulator cockpit build. I’m thinking there should be nothing particularly complicated about milling them – they’re all 146mm wide and various heights tall. They all will have contour cutouts for places that controls (knobs, switches, etc.) will stick out from a PCB that will be mounted behind the completed panel. The panel material will be 6mm (nominal) thick 2447 or 7328 white cast acrylic. The only vaguely tricky thing is top edge will need a 0.75mm radius fillet all the way around it. After the initial cutting is done the panel gets painted and then markings have to be engraved through the paint to label the knobs and switches. The translucent acrylic allows LED backlighting to make the control marking readable for night flying in the simulator.
My fundamental questions, as a CNC newbie: what bits do I need for the cutting and engraving operations? From what I’ve been reading, it seems the single-flute ‘O’ bits seem best for cutting acrylic. What about engraving?
-M.