I’m doing this large chessboard for a Christmas gift. On the inside of the frame, and other areas, the depth is fairly deep. In order to get the full detail, I would like to a smaller than 1/8" ball end mill. The ones that are smaller all have a taper to them and I think that will affect cut on the sides. Anyone have any suggestions?
What is the tallest vertical feature?
You’ll want to use a tool which has at least that length of cutting flute.
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Not really sure yet, still working on the roughing to finish up.
My guess would be one of these walls…
That’s a LOT of detail, and I suspect you may need to go down to 1/16, or even 1/32 ball to get it all. You might want to find a software that can do 3D rest milling (Flow cutting, pencil tracing, …?? not sure what else it might be called).
Another option would be to edit the model to draft all vertical walls to the angle of your smallest tapered ball. (5° - 6°?)
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Ok, I found a local machine shop here in town that sells end mills. I picked up a 1/16" ball nose with a 1.5" extended reach. I have started my finish path, but it’s not cleaning up from my roughing paths. Don’t mind all of the “strings”, my end mill was toast when this finished up. Notice on photo, the straight line is how much I have run so far. If you look at the red box, you will notice that the depths are not blending together. What would happen if I used either a 1/32" or 1/8" ball nose end mill? The second photo is showing great detail so far. I just thought of something that I could do, and that would be to decrease my overall height by about 0.020" Any other suggestions would be helpful.
Amazon sells a 1.5mm down spiral bit they atr like 15 bucks for 5 i use them on anything thinner than a quarter inch. Might be worth it heres a link. Try 1 on a test piece and see if they fit your need
uxcell 5PCS 1/8" Shank 1.5mm x 12mm Carbide End Mill CNC Router Bits 2 Flute Milling Bit for Acrylic PVC MDF Wood uxcell 5PCS 1/8" Shank 1.5mm x 12mm Carbide End Mill CNC Router Bits 2 Flute Milling Bit for Acrylic PVC MDF Wood - Amazon.com