New Nomad 3 Owner vs Milling Aluminum ( Aluminum Won) Advice / Help?

No problem. Glad it was useful.

Be careful with this. The spec for an 1/8" ER11 collet torque is 18 ft-lb. Any more than this and you can end up damaging something or causing more runout.

Are you snapping your collets into the nuts before mounting them?

Assuming that the CC feeds, speeds, and stepover are correct for the tool and material then yes. Functionally the force is cubic material removed per flute per rotation. So any increase in chipload, stepover, tool diameter, or cutting depth increases the forces proportionally. How much something can take depends on the material, tool geometry and carbide grade.

It gets fuzzy and hard to give a hard “yes” though as it’s possible to run that size tooling much harder than those numbers. It depends on the tool geometry, specific material, and rest of the machine setup to determine if you can. I have tried to avoid some of this here as you said you’re new and they turn into deep rabbit holes.

Yeah, we all know that feeling. I remember when I was first starting out and was testing a 3/16" tool. I messed up my Z zero and plunged it through 1" of MIC-6 aluminum that was my CNC base. That was a fast and expensive learning experience. The extra fun part was that I got to stare at my mistake for years to come from that hole.

This is true. I’m assuming that they are mostly okay as they completed a pocket with those setting. That leads me to think that it’s either a 5000 or 6000 series aluminum.

In general though it’s always a good idea to know the grade you are cutting. Settings that will work for 6061 will fail on 1000 series or 6062 if not aggressive enough e.g. Nomad3 Aluminum - #10 by TDA

As I said previously I’m trying not to overwhelm you as you are starting out and trying to use recommend settings and tools. But if you do want to go deeper into this, or there’s something I can help with, let me know.

3 Likes