Need advice on cutting 0.060 styrene

[Garth (1957chebby)]

i have a project that entails cutting tags from 0.060 styrene. I have ordered single flute 1/8 inch bits. I have a dewalt 611 router. Any advice on the feeds and speeds?

[Julien]

This gentleman apparently used 10k / 30ipm on a single flute 1/16",

Styrene recomendations

Thanks gentlemen. I played around with this all day trying to find the sweet spot. I’m sure others have had different results as there are so many variables however… Using the Makita with a 1/16 single flute carbide at the lowest spindle speed (10k) and a feed rate of 30 per minute offered up pretty good results on .125 inch HIPS sheet. I also set it up to cut through on 3 passes. I started with a much lower feed rate of 10 PM and continually increased it from there. The material chips out…

That is a 0.003" chipload, which sounds fine to me in soft plastics. The same should work on a 1/8" single flute, but you should also be able to push it faster.

0.060" should be doable in a single depth pass (if it’s not great that will likely be due to poor chip evacuation down a 0.060" slot, in which case doing two passes of 0.03" will help)

If you want to speed things up you can multiply both RPM and feedrate by any factor as long as the ration remains the same.

So 20k RPM and 60 to 80ipm should work fine too.

[Garth (1957chebby)]

thanks very much for the information. I appreciate it. Gives me a starting point.