Roundover bits for Nomad?

So I have been playing around with the Nomad and having been liking the engraver bits especially. But I want to have a Roundover bit, but for the life of me cannot find a reliable source on exactly what I can use for it. To be honest, I’m ignorant on what to look for to determine what is compatible with the nomad based in the bit listings.

I heard that the Whiteside 1570,1572, and 1574 are good for cnc, but the collet might be wrong?

Thanks in advance

I wrote a bit about using such tooling at:

You’ll need a 1/4" collet, and you’ll need to keep the mass of the tool and the cutting forces w/in what the Nomad spindle can cope with.

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Thanks for the suggested post!

I think I will only fully understand it once I start trying to cut with it.

Is there a particular 1/4" collet that I should get? These ones? ER-11 Collet and Nut - Carbide 3D

It can be hard to visualize — I’ve been working on a tool for this — post your file when you’re ready and we’ll see if it helps.

Yes, that should work for 1/4" shank tooling.

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Alright, thank you for the help!

Will probably get the ER-11 collets and the whiteside bits mentioned previously.

But what did you mean with “…and you’ll need to keep the mass of the tool and the cutting forces w/in what the Nomad spindle can cope with.”? What should I look out for or keep in mind? Planning on cutting mostly soft wood, but with the option of hard wood as well.

My Nomad experience is w/ the 883 Pro where we specifically enjoined folks to not use 1/4" tooling on harder materials and before the folks such as @wmoy worked up feeds and speeds for Carbide Create.

I defer to their experience/guidance on this.

That said, see:

and

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Understood and thanks for the references!

I’m using the Nomad3, would that bear the same concerns as the 883?

I would assume the same considerations generally apply, though to a lesser extent.
IMO the big upgrade from the 883 to the nomad 3 was the massive increase in rpm. For micro milling and other very low force operations that the nomad 3 is often used for this was a fantastic upgrade.

That said, it doesn’t buy you much on the other end of the spectrum where large round overs or bowls tend to live. They want to go slower and use more power.
They also aren’t generally aren’t rated for such high rpm so you couldn’t use them safely even if the little nomad had the horsepower to really push them through the material.

My opinion, most things are possible on the nomad just be considerate and careful in your approach. I’d guess whatever was said about the 883 largely still applies here.


(Full disclosure, I’m just going off of vibes and some personal experience so if anyone disagrees, feel free to let us know :grin:)

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So pardon the crude summary (seriously, thank you to everyone taking the time to answer, just want to confirm in a straightforward way), what I’m hearing from this whole discussion is roundover bits can probably break my Nomad3 because the Nomad3 can only handle a 1/8" collet- and from what I saw, there are no 1/8" roundover bits available on the market (I have to look at the shank size to see if it will fit into the collet, right)?

It’s more the mass of the tool — a small roundover tool w/ 1/4" shaft diameter would almost certainly be w/in the capabilities of the Nomad, say one like:

or

Oh, alright- that makes more sense!

So 1/4" collets and the bits that fit in are ‘technically’ fine- but rather, some bits are simply too massive for it to be comfortable. So the Whiteside 1570 would be way more compatible (caution is still needed, but more compatible) than the 1574, despite both being the same shank size.

So I’m assuming that the Whiteside 1574 is too massive- would the 1572 be safer as the “biggest” bit for the Nomad? In this scenario, given the information I would do some passes with the 1568 and/or maybe the 1570 before graduating to the 1572 for the full effect I wanted.

I believe that you will need to iteratively test and try various feeds and speeds in various materials.

Using graduated roundover tools seems like an unnecessary complication and would wear expensive tooling — I’d just draw in geometry and use “No Offset” Contour toolpaths to bulk remove material w/ a #101 or 102.

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Cool, thank you for letting me know and for giving me all the resources- much appreciated!

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I should be getting around to figuring out some of this myself soon (hopefully within a week or so, figuring out tapping thoroughly distracted me :sweat_smile:)
Feel free to bookmark my post if you want to follow along: Round over metal edges

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