Milling Wilsonart Solid Surface

I am reaching out to see if members have had an y experience working with Wilsonart Solid Surface material. Solid Surface is one of their offerings for countertops along with others. I am wanting to mill out some designs and before I experiment wanted to see if someone has “Been there. Done that”.

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If it’s same/similar to Corian then yes I’ve cut it. Corian is same/similar to a product called Candlestone which is used for CNC lithophane creation. It’s brittle, but cuts really well and with a high level of detail. Do a web search for lithphanes and/or Candlestone and you should find a lot of information. If I’m totally off and it’s a different product I apologize in advance. If it’s the same stuff be sure to report back here so we can share the knowledge.

Dan

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I have reached out to the folks at Corian to see if the compisition of their product is similar to the Wilsonart. At forst glance of some of the info I read the Corian is actually a bit tougher than Solid Surface but I will wait to hear back from the experts to confirm.

I was just having a bit of a web browse and came across this on Wikipedia:

In that article at least they kinda call “solid surface” a product in its own right. Doesn’t say they’re the same product, but I found it interesting such a generic term would be specific to “Corian like” products.

Dan

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For the benefit of a positive contribution to this topic. i have cut corian and read several forums (unproductively) about cutting it. what you will want to know for certain outside feeds/speeds, tooling, etc. if you are not fortunate enough to get “Chips” while you are machining it. you are going to want good ventilation and respiratory protection. and keeping your machine cleaned off while machining is going to be fun. the couple of projects i ran with white corian were at not so alarming at first glance, everything looked like a beautiful winter wonderland in the machining area. then i saw that stuff was everywhere. spend some time on dialing in your feeds and speeds is the take away here try to get chips and not dust if you can. i had some problems getting desired surface finish with contoured pieces. so you will probably want to be looking into polishing techniques for corian/solid surfaces. i will try to dig up some of the pictures of my projects and share later. its a beautiful material for lithopanes and gift boxes.

Thanks for the input. Can’t wait to see if you are able to post some pictures.
Another prime example of the Forum working to help group.

trying again with the pictures. hope this works

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Those are fantastic. They are nowhere near the detail I was going after.
Do you mind sharing the bit(s) you used?

You can get crazy good detail with these products:

I’ve done a few small 4x6" lithophanes from photographs and they have serious detail, and take a seriously long time to cut all that detail.

Dan

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Though there may be multiple products by Wilsonart and I could be wrong, I think what @euscsey58 may be referring to is very similar to the thin Formica that is used for laminate countertops. Though I haven’t had experience cutting Wisonart on my CNC, I have used it as a laminate.

Bill


This is a picture of a piece of the Solid Surface material. It measures out at .47 inches thick.

Mr. mrcaland would you be willing to share the information on the bit you used a well as a targrt feed and speed I can start with?

sorry, insert random excuse here. got hit with a few surprises in the home life have been a bit tied up. so after a bit of digging. i haven’t gotten around to revising/revisiting these projects since 2016, and they were not done with to my current level of jobs recording. best i can determine is the following.
the bits are going to be .125" ball nose end mills(these are the specs i have in my evernote listing).
Autek10x 1/8" Titanium Coated 2 Two Flute Carbide Ball Nose End Mills CNC Bit Router 22mm(2Qx3.22Tix10)
* Shank diameter (SD): 3.175mm,cutting edge diameter (CED): 3.175mm
* Cutting edge length (CEL): 22mm
* Pack size: 10pc
* Total length: 38mm
* 27mm stickout

at the time i probably got them from eiter aliexpress or amazon.
for cutting my notes say something along the lines of
0.1mm depth of cut
1092 mm/min feed rate
20000 rpm
312.8 mm/min plunge
i used gwiz calc which has changed and i have since added a speed control to the router so these values may be not be the best.

additional notes scrounged from various forums that i saved but are UNVERIFIED. found at.
http://www.talkshopbot.com/forum/showthread.php?20749-Speed-feed-for-3d-cutting-of-corian-with-tapered-ball-nose-end-mill

Corian cuts well but it is hard,
for profiling and pocketing we use a 1/4" up cut and o flute,
1/8" up cut, and 1/16" o flute bits and all cut well just need to go slow and take your time.
With the bits feeds and speeds are:
1/4" 2-3 ips @ .125-.25 @ 12000-14000 rpm
1/8" 1-2 ips @ .0625-.125 @ 12000-16000 rpm
1/16" .5 ips @ .003 @ 16000 rpm
1/4" 50-75 mm/s @ 3.175mm-6.35mm depth of cut @ 12000-14000 rpm
1/8" 25-50 mm/s @ 1.5875mm-3.175mm depth of cut @ 12000-16000 rpm
1/16" 12.7 mm/s @ .0762mm depth of cut@ 16000 rpm

hope this helps. best of luck. remember you don’t want to breathe this stuff.

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Are your feedrates ips or ipm

the stuff above the additional notes is 1,092 millimeters per minute (mm/min) feed rate, with 312.8 millimeters per minute plunge rate. ( i tend to work metric).
the additional notes sections from the other website has inches per second (ips) and millimeters per second (mm/s) feed rates grouped together respectively.

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ok. thanks I was just checking. i\I am not used to seeing ips.

no problem. to be honest the first time i revisited my notes it took me a moment to remember why there was so much alphabet soup here.

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