Just wondering if anyone has a solution for making holes in the sides of large aluminium plates? My design is easy for the flat plate parts, however I need to make holes in the front and side of the plate and then later manually tap them with 1/4-20 thread etc.
Does anyone have a solution for accurately making these types of holes? There’s no way to put the plate on its side as it’s around 500mm wide. There are a few plates to cut but they’re about 20mm thick.
Any ideas? Otherwise I’ll send it off for machining on Hubs etc. But I always like to make parts myself as 90% of it I can make myself.
Which machine? Several will reach off the front edge of the machine. You may need to scoot the machine forward so the part can be mounted vertically.
How accurate? You could mark the locations on the top surface with a vee-bit, then scribe the hole locations with a square & manually drill & tap them. You could also make a drill guide to get them centered & square.
This probably isn’t right but what I would try is a drilling operation with a quarter inch shank center drill (hopefully you have one), zero from bottom double check stock thickness, measure your dia to desired and what predrill depth on center drill that will be. Use those numbers to make locator holes for your drilling operation. Assuming you have precision drill bits could also perform most of that on the Shapeoko but you would want to peck drill for the full depth operation as your depth is more than 3x the dia
The gantry can be shifted forward on the side carriages for a front overhang. You would have to make a fixture that overhung the front of the machine and went down that you then clamp the material to kinda like the picture below. It is a bit of work, but can definitely be done and the S5P was designed to have the capability.
I have made aluminium boxes for control systems. These boxes are screwed together (8mm plate) . I do the end holes in a drill press using an aluminium jig i milled on the cnc using the same design as reference. The end plates slide into a slot in the jog. The slot has holes milled in the right places through which my drill bit goes. If that makes any sense.
