I have a 1/4hp (186W) DC brushed motor with a 3:1 belt reduction. RE: End Mill Jamming in Aluminum during CNC milling Attempts imcjoek (Mechanical) 7 Apr 15 20:04Īs a point of reference, I've done a lot of work with a Sherline mill/lathe combo. I have to say that for the 1.25 mm thick aluminium plates, I enjoyed better results while milling directly through the plate, i.e. The machine is advertised as suitable for soft metal like aluminum, copper and silver but is 230W enough for the type of milling operation I'm looking to accomplish? The work piece is held down using a low profile drill press vise attached with screw to the working surface of the router. Frustration is rising as I have to go buy extra fuses and continue to work with the machine. Problems occurred for my last two attempts during the first cut layer after less than 10 seconds and both time, the fuse blew. The damn thing stop and the fuse blew after about 3 seconds.ĭuring my first two attempts, I did get pretty far, at about 4-5 cuts deep and then it started having a really rough time and I manually stopped the machine. So I tried another milling operation with 4500 rpm. RE: End Mill Jamming in Aluminum during CNC milling Attempts DominicASP (Materials)Ĭoncerning the machine, it is indeed the. Make sure you are conventional milling: NOT climb milling.ĭoes your jam occur only as the cut gets deeper? Or will it occur on the first pass? If it only occurs deeper, can you widen out your pocket to allow some chip-space?ĭo the slides allow significant lash/wiggle? IE: Something moved.ĭo you absolutely require that tiny endmill? Can you get away with a larger diameter? 1/8"? In these little machines, crashes and jams occur 90% of the time due to lack of rigidity, poor work holding setup, or poor tool holding setup.
That said, a bit of kerosene or tap magic type stuff can help prevent galling in gummy-bear aluminum, but frankly if the setup is such that it crashes cutting dry, it's gonna crash lubed too. The damn things don't have the horsepower to really heat up the tool. My experience with these little hobby-duty machines:Įffect of coolants and lubes on tooling is negligible. RE: End Mill Jamming in Aluminum during CNC milling Attempts JNieman (Aerospace) 7 Apr 15 17:43 At a first glace, do my parameters look good? Is my machine powerful enough to complete such operation? Any hints/tips would be greatly appreciated! Thanks a lot! Since I was able to cut through softer 1.25 mm thick aluminum plates with the same machine, end mill and parameters, I am wondering what is causing my problems. I use WD-40 as a lubricant and compressed air to blow the chips away. When it happened, I always tried to shut down my controller as fast as I could to prevent further damage to my machine but during my last trial, the fuse blew and had to replace it. I have been trying 4 times to complete the operation but every single time, at some point, I would start hearing a really harsh noise and could see that my spindle speed was gradually slowing down or even see my end mill completely jam in the aluminium. To generate my gcode, I used CamBam with the following parameters: I am trying to cut a profile through the entire thickness of the box. I am trying to cut through a 4.3 mm thick aluminium box with a TiN coated carbide 2 flutes 42degree end mill with the following specs: I just bought a Chinese 3040 230W engraving CNC machine and have recently been struggling with milling operations on aluminium as you can see on my previous forum posts.