I am aiming to cut acrylic that will serve as a mold for a polymer that I wish to attach to a microscopic slide that is 7.5 cm long x 2.5 cm wide x 0.1 cm high. I currently have the basic 1/8" tools nut and collet that came with the Nomad 3, but have recently learned that these tools are too large for me to use to cut acrylic that is at the most as big as that microscope slide I previously gave the dimensions for. This would explain why I keep getting “empty toolpaths” in every software I try to design for my project. What kind of tool can I use to cut at the millimeter resolution? This article is from a research team that used the Nomad 883 to cut a block of polycarbonate to the 1000 μm range (1 mm) using a tool from Bantam Tools but they did not specify which one. Do you think there may be a better option for my purpose? The acrylic does not have to be 1 mm thick, in all likeliness it will be at about 0.5 inches in thickness. The important thing is that the pores I aim to drill through my acrylic have a diameter of at least 0.2 mm.
You need 0.2mm holes drilled through half inch (12.7mm) acrylic?
Assuming you meant cutting through 0.5mm thickness, with diameter below 1mm, you are in the “micromachining” domain, there are specialty endmills for that. Here is one example product page from PreciseBits, a US company that has been mentioned on the forum often. They have microtools to cut acrylic
Those are some nice looking cutters, I may pick up a couple to add to my shop as well.
Just wanted to say for the (seemingly tiny) holes you may want to look into pcb drills. The come in any size you would need under ~3mm and they are very cheap.
My hunch is that you might find melting to be a problem. Pcb drills like high rpm and regular cutters that small don’t like to be pushed through material, so your feeds and speeds will likely take some dialing in.
Another recommendation, with tooling this small… buy at least two(especially if you’re new to this kind of work).
They’re so fragile that a wrong move in setup or a poorly judged jog will leave you with nothing but heartbreak while you wait on shipping for the replacement.
Good luck, I’ll be following this one to see how it turns out 
Acrylic calls for FAST plungerates, to avoid melting/wrapping melted plastic around the endmill, but very small endmills may not like to be plunged super fast, at least not deep. 0.5mm should be no issue though, it’s probably not even worth doing peck drilling at such shallow depth. Like Tyler said, it’s probably a good idea to get a set of cheaper PCB drills initially to experiment, rather than costly micromachining endmills (you will break some, guaranteed)
If that is possible yes. The maximum height would ideally be 1 inch
No I meant through 0.5 inch thickness, but that may be too strenous of a task. What would the maximum height allowed for acrylic be if I wanted to mill 2 mm holes with the 112 or 122 endmills?
Thank you for the PCB drill idea I will definitely look into them since I do not have a very high budget so micromachining may be out of the question for me but we shall see
Those endmills would not be adequate, as they have a short cutting length (0.0625" for the 122)
You should rather look at procuring a 2mm square endmill with a long length of cut. Not sure they exist with 0.5" LOC, I’ll check my usual suppliers out or curiosity
2mm and 0.2mm are rather different
If you’re really on a budget, you can check out the very small cutters sold by drillman1 on eBay. They are very small two flutes so the finish will not be as nice as the single flute plastic specific endmills but…they’ll get the job done.
You can look at length of cut for the max depth but the closer you get to using the entire length, the more likely you are to break the tool.
Generally you want to use the largest tool you can get away with. Though at 2mm i still think a pcb drill is ideal with the caveat that a tool change may get annoying depending on how many you need to make.
Here’s an example of a 2mm endmill with 0.5" LOC
I was confused what you meant at first but just re-read my post, my mistake! I really meant to say 2 mm diameter at the end not 0.2 mm
That’s why I stepped out of the conversation.
For 2mm holes you might just try a 1/16" plastic endmill.
If you’re doing a lot of holes, I’d look at a dedicated drill bit made for plastic.
Just to say it out loud, I think you’ll want a smaller endmill than hole size. EG if you want a 2mm hole, you probably want a <2mm endmill.
I don’t actually know how much less but i think ~10% is common for operations like slotting 
(I’ll leave it to more experienced folks to confirm/deny/expand on that comment)
Thank you for saying that I actually needed to read it aloud that I need to use a tool that is smaller than the hole I am trying to create with it. It seems like the #112 endmill may work just fine for me since it looks like I can create a mold with a depth of about 1/8" and 2mm holes using 1/2" acrylic as stock.
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