you can get 2mm bits which are a nice balance between size and strength (I find that smaller bits snap easy)
there’s not too much you can do beyond that, round peg square hole kind of thing… especially if you can’t use a V bit.
that is, unless you’re willing to cut away a bit too much instead… then there are options obviously
What about a corner chisel?
I Don’t own one so don’t know, but does anyone else know if a laser can cut a sharper corner?
Yes, but there usually is a tiny tiny bit of radius to remove on parts cut with a laser, we are speaking of a laser kerf of up to 1mm.
I was just wondering the same thing. if anyone has used the jtech laser in conjunction with the shapeoko and able to align the two cuts perfectly or not
Corner chisel won’t work for 1/2" acrylic
This is an inherent problem with using round spinning tools: they can’t make interior sharp edges.
If you need to make squares, you need a different tool. For mills and lathes, there are rotary broaches. I don’t think these are compatible with Carbide 3D’s machines though
Aside from mills and lathes, there are regular broaches and more conventional tools like files.
Tiny endmills do exist but they’re very expensive, fragile and they require a spindle with crazy high concentricity.
Now there’s an interesting challenge for someone who knows what they are doing - is it possible to focus a laser beam to give less than a 1mm radius? Simplistically it must be possible as I can’t think what the limiting parameter might be other than the precision of the lenses being employed.
Do you have a recommended site for the 2mm bits?
No experience w/ lasers (to be frank, the safety implications and the need to filter/exhaust worry me to no end), but all the box generators which I have seen assume an essentially zero kerf, cutting directly along the line, and don’t adjust for the radius, assuming that the total cutting width of the laser (half off for each side of the line) will be equivalent to the glue line.
We have:
which I have found wonderfully useful — as noted, it’s far stronger than a 1/16" or 1/32" endmill, but sufficiently smaller than a 1/8" (3.175mm) endmill that it can cut far smaller details — I just wish we had an equivalent ball-nose.
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B073TXC45Z is what I use for 2mm bits… single flute (nice for plastics), down cut (nice for wood) and while you CAN snap them… they take a reasonable amount of abuse while not breaking the bank too much
Ah, I was laying in bed reading this thread on my phone and missed that part. I guess that’s why there weren’t already ten people mentioning it.
I machine a lot glass panels into acrylic. I rest machine the corners with a 1/16" endmill, producing a 1/32" corner radius. I clean up with a square file/sharp chisel/razor blade. Works just fine for me. The more difficult part is programming to avoid over cutting the corner. Endmill deflection. Machine deflection.
Lasers don’t necessarily give you a perfect corner either. The beam is conical. Heat saturation. ect
Not quite what you are looking for but a die filer and a jig might be the fast way to square corners here. Luckily there are plans for a die filer here that can be made with a C3D cnc thanks to @RichCournoyer !
Use a square file with 90 degree faces- this works fine if you have to have exactly quart internal corners. Might have an issue if you can get a file in position???
You can cut square corners with a two inch endmill, but you may have to tweak the Gcode a bit by hand. The path needs to extend beyond the desired dimension by 1/2 the diameter of the end mill, both E-W and N-S so that the edge of the mill is tracing the desired path rather than the center of the end mill. This is easy enough for outside cuts, but inside or pocket cuts are more problematic. You may want to get some of the sub-millimeter Chinese endmills for sharp inside corners.
@StephenN Can I ask what you’re fitting in the acrylic that needs to be a perfect squared corner? Maybe the solution is on that side of the equation.
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