Cutting Aluminum Issues

Hi Mike,

You are not feeding fast enough for that RPM, so you are melting the material rather than cutting it.
Your project in CC has a feedrate of 931mm/min = 36.6ipm, for an RPM of 12223, which should more or less work, but if you set your Makita dial on ‘6’ you are actually running it at 30.000 RPM, almost three times faster…as a result, your chipload is 36.6 / (3x30.000) = 0.0004", which is not enough for cutting aluminium with a 1/4" endmill. The recommanded minimum is 0.001".

I suggest you retry with your Makita dial set to 2 (~12.000 RPM) or even a bit lower, then you will match the settings in CC, and your chipload will then be 36.6 / 3x12000 = 0.001". After that, you could also push the feedrate a bit, to get a little margin above this 0.001" limit : you can use feedrate override in CM, start with 10% more and increase until you are getting chips.

Also, the #201 is not coated, so not fully ideal for aluminium. Maybe also use a few drops of WD-40.
But first, you will need to clean-up that bit, lye is the go-to solution if the gummy aluminium residue does not come off easily.

EDIT: also, check out the first video in this thread for hints about cutting aluminium

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