I need to cut stainless steel rings off camera housings. About 1mm
I am new to this machine. Curious about feed rates and tooling?
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Are the rings hardened? Which alloy are they?
We have some basic information at: https://docs.carbide3d.com/support/#tooling-support and you may find some useful information searching here for stainless, or on the wiki: https://wiki.shapeoko.com/index.php/Materials#Stainless_Steel
Depending on how many, a Dremel equipped with an abrasive wheel will make quick work of it. Actually, regardless of how many, this sounds like hand-work to me.
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The precision needs to be quite high. I have tried this by hand and it is almost impossible. These are rings located on the forward facing camera for the iphone X. The ring which is installed prior to the housing being spot welded to the frame cannot be slipped off. The replacement rings I sourced I can easily grind off the tabs so they can be installed once glass replaced.
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Alright - I had to check this out and it looks pretty challenging but this would be great to see working as a Nomad application!
Random thoughts:
(1) you will have to make some sort of jig to precisely place the housing and and hold it absolutely firm while machining out the rings. That thin housing will probably want to vibrate and chatter easily. I am thinking some sort of sandwich arrangement, where the outside of the housing goes into a precise fit depression and a second plastic block gets pressed against the inside of the housing, leaving a window where the camera bump is to get in and machine the ring out.
(2) since the housing is not going to have electronics in it you can probably use some sort of lubricant - probably a squirt of WD40 is where to start experimenting. Or even use the camera bubble as a kind of pool for lubricant perhaps?
(3) I am no expert on stainless, but I would start with a good quality carbide end mill, keep relatively conservative feeds and speeds and feel it out. Looking at an iPhone X and guessing how this would work I would use a 0.125 square end mill. I am on a stub end mill kick recently so in my mind to play super safe i would go with a stub end mill to keep chatter down, but as long as you have a few housings to experiment with I would go with standard carbide end mill first as you probably have it on hand.
Good luck and let us know what happens!
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