Hardcore Aluminum milling on an S3

Datron bottle opener made by a Neo. It’s a badass reminder of proper mini machining #goals

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00101001

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Found out where that pesky easy button was hiding. Mdf deck S3, HDZ, stock belts, carbide3d single flute, 95%dry/wd wall

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time to pick the masters brain… :wink:
can you share the feed and speed for this one?
also, what about the DOC or optimal load setting? (i’m assuming this was another 3d adaptive?)

You ready to step into the rabbit hole? :rofl:

It becomes this crazy chess like dance. There’s a ton of information that comes with feeds and speeds

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Hmmm, binary 41, 29 hex

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Lol, I know, I’m just starting to get my feet wet with 360.
I guess I was looking for some of the numbers for basic pocket roughing operations.
Not expecting any “hey, these are the perfect settings” numbers. I know there’s no magic formula. :wink:

I’ve already broken a few bits while fine tuning my paths. I figure any tidbits of info that I can use on my learning journey can’t hurt.
…well, I suppose they might hurt, but it’s still fun learning and trying. :smiley:

Actually there is a magic rule of thumb

The most important thing is to make sure chipload is at least 0.001 (0.0008 for 1/16) minimum. If cutting under 50% diameter you need to use a chip thinning calculator to see actual chip size.

Chipload will tell you your speed and feed. Radial depth of cut you can start small and increase until chattering.

A single flute endmill will allow you to spin a higher rpm which in turn lowers cutter forces but keeps a normal chipload, they also clear chips very well

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Thanks Vince.
My biggest issue right now is figuring out the best paths without overloading the tool.
It seems to me that the chipload is the same for a half-diameter cut as it is for a full-diameter cut.
But the load on a full diameter cut is a heck of a lot more. My ears and router can confirm that. :wink:
I haven’t been able to get an adaptive path to work effectively, because it takes a hogging full-dia pass on it’s initial pass around the edge. The only way to alleviate the impact is to reduce the DOC. But then the remainder of the cuts aren’t removing enough. (or at least as much as they could be)
I’ve found (at least on the simple piece I’m milling) that doing a traditional 2d pocket is better, because I can come in at the corner, and the heavy full-width cut is brief as it just nips away the corner, and then the subsequent passes are taking the appropriate half-pass cuts.

What I’d really like to find is a nice spiral or block path that starts in the middle with a basic drill/bore operation, and then spirals it’s way out from the center.

anyway, back to playing with paths… :slight_smile:

I was playing quite a bit with paths last night. You should be able up get adaptive to do whatever you want with the right boundaries, you can even sketch boundaries.

Have you tried 3d pocket clearing?

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Yeah, 3d adaptive was basically the same as 2d adaptive on my part.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by sketching boundaries? Do you mean adding some ‘artificial’ parts to the drawing to get it to mill those areas first?

That’s what adaptive does for me. Set your optimal load around 0.04", your DoC around 0.1" and then your chipload at 0.001" and try that. It works great for me with my 3/16" ZrN 2-flute endmill. Vince recommended it to me previously.

Thanks Jon.
I was under the impression that optimal load was similar to stepover. Does it actually vary the DOC to reduce the load?

Thanks for the recommendations. I’m going to do some more playing with these numbers and do some test runs on wood. Save some bits from potential destruction. :wink:

Like this?

It’s just a matter of setting parameters in Adaptive Clearing to get your path moving in the direction you want. FM (frigging magic) to me, at first.

I learned all I know about milling aluminum with the SO3 from the threads in this forum.

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Still FM to me it seems. :tired_face:
Haven’t figured out how to tell it to start in the middle of a face. The entry point option seems to only allow me to select edges.

I’ll take some screen shots in a bit, show you what I’m doing.

Here we go, for the part in the video

Setup tab:

Adaptive clearing,
Tool:


Geometry:

Passes:

Linking:

Toolpath:

You could do the same cut without the 10mm offset in the Geometry tab, I just discovered, but I wonder if you’d get more heat in the narrow channel being cut? I’ll see what happens if I cut the part again.

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Yes, it is similar to stepover. OL will maintain a constant DOC.

For choosing where it enters, you need to go the rightmost tab in the toolpath setup “Linking”. You can tell it to not enter from the edge there down at the bottom.

Otherwise, you may need to go to the “Geometry” tab and force it to stay inside your boundary and not to try using all your stock.

If you post your file, I can help more.

Yeah, I’ve tried setting the entry point on the linking, but it doesn’t seem to let me select a spot in the middle of a geometry plane, I can only select edges.
Tried attaching my file here, but it won’t let me attach .step files. Guess this will have to wait until I get home tonight.
I’m sure I’m missing something obvious…

@griff, thanks for the pics.
I’m not seeing an entry point setting in there. So I guess that bore operation was the start of the center pocket?

Honestly, I’ve never set an entry point.

In this case the entry point was the lower, right corner.

Just add .zip to the end of the file and tell the recipient to remove .zip.